yeah son. more college essays. YOU'RE WELCOME
I never expected to so deeply understand the strength of a maternal bond at the young age of fifteen. Being from Newnan, Georgia, it happens to be many people's second favorite joke (after allusions to incest) to respond to a statement like that with the assumption that I am a teenage mother. Most of said people usually fathom themselves to be extraordinarily witty, which is usually a good sign that one's sense of humor actually ranks somewhere between that of a corpse and that of Carrot Top. In any case, I am actually talking about my baby brother, Thomas Hawthorne Mayer. He has not yet quite grown into his lofty name which is strangely reminiscent of more serious pursuits than infancy, but he is well on his way to doing so, seeing as he has more intelligence and irresistible charm than anyone else I know. Of course I may be slightly biased, because I spend so much of my free time taking care of him and talking to him. His memory and his capacity to absorb astounding amounts of information in such short periods of time never cease to surprise me. He is only two years old, and already he can pick out particular words from a page of a book (that's called reading!), say goodnight to a seemingly endless list of every person and every dog who is meaningful to him, feel compassion for the pain of a broken chair, imitate any animal, call out from memory the things in the pictures of his books without looking, decide whether he wants to listen to the Duke, the King, or the Bird before he goes to bed, swing a rolling pin and shout "Babe Ruth! Babe Ruth!", count to ten, and even figure out how to be funny. He knows it is a joke of some sort to snort like a pig, or to pretend that the animal version of a bat is used like a baseball bat, or to offer up a kiss and then grab my nose at the last second instead. He has brought a light-hearted, headlong, joy to my life, an almost reckless oblivion to the plodding of time. Children do not understand their lives in the context of birth and death. He has shown me the profound depths of thought and meaning that can be found in childishness, in the elements of life that have nothing to do with philosophy, literature, history, or any high-minded pursuit.
This blond-haired, blue-eyed impish creature was quite unlike anything I had ever seen. It rained the day he was born; I made sure to remember the late-summer storm, to attribute some meaning to this idea of a person, to whom I could attach nothing but a name, a gender, and a due date more than a month in the future. He was all numbers and letters to me, the summation of countless discussions of names; the anticipation of an endlessly growing belly. Even now his name means little-it is the person who brings the name a profound significance, not vice-versa. When I hear “Thomas,” I have an immediate emotional reaction of joy and pre-emptive nostalgia, a deep appreciation of our limited time together. The thought of leaving him when I go to college is nearly unbearable. Late at night I sing to him with an honesty and vulnerability I show no one else. I soothe him with “Amazing Grace,” “Red River Valley,” and even “Al Slosha,” a song I learned for chorus in fifth grade whose haunting, hallowed, rising tones and foreign sounds have never left me. I think he understands the pain of music; though usually a happy baby, he bursts into tears when he hears “I’m so lonesome, I could cry.” He has always been surprisingly sensitive. I once accidentally broke a patio chair, and he was immediately devastated, making no distinction between the splintered wood and a severed human leg. For almost an hour, he cried and lamented, “Oh no chair! Fix! Oh no!” and tried to render the ultimate panacea-kisses on the boo-boo. He did the same when the hair of his doll, Jill, came off, shrieking in horror at her injury. Even more enchanting is his insistence on knowing the names of everyone in magazine pictures, in family photo albums, public places, and in the countless photographs taped to the door of my older brother’s room. My favorite one to quiz him on is the Bob Dylan poster, whom he affectionately calls “Bob Billy.”
Thomas also has a profoundly intimate sense of those around him, always wanting a “big hug” or a “Kiss Naneen!” but he is infinitely stubborn about the silliest things, from how one should sit when playing with toys (lying on my side is met with a resounding “Sit up Naneen!”) to taking showers instead of baths. He prefers them because, for one, he can hop in and out and play hide-and-seek (a.k.a. “Thomas, are you?”) behind the shower curtain. The best perk, though, is that it is much easier to wash my hair when I have to lean in, under the water, to help wash him. His handsome, full-toothed smile spreads across his face when I let him lather up my hair and get my clothes wet, and his love for me is undeniable. Babies cannot, or will not, feign laughter--a sure sign that they must know something we do not. That pure joy is worth anything, even when he is so overwhelmed that he has to clap his hands and jump up and down, and sometimes violently grab the fat of my cheeks in his unfathomably strong, tiny fingers in his outpouring of enthusiasm.
Thomas's refreshing wonder at the mundane is never more invigorating than when I turn cartwheels. Never in my life would I have expected that my uncoordinated, flailing remnants of third-grade gymnastics lessons would be met with such awe. I honestly do not think he could be more impressed if I walked on water or suddenly took flight. He gasps at first, then lets loose a high-pitched laugh that dissolves into snorting and what can only be described as pleasure-filled moans. He scrunches up his nose and bares his teeth into a smile, then says, “Do this, Naneen, do this again,” throwing his arms over his head and then leading sideways to touch the ground. And, for reasons beyond logic, he never grows tired of watching me do them. I used to think of love in abstract, scholarly terms or in relation to timeless, grief-stricken love stories. Now I know that, at least for me, it has a much simpler definition: an unconditional willingness to do whatever is in my capacity to make the one I love happy. I know this because turning over one hundred cartwheels in one night can only be justifiable by severe mental illness or love. For my own sake, I hope it is the latter.
summer in the city
means cleavage cleavage cleavage
and i start to miss you
baby, sometimes
i been stayin up, drinkin
in late night establishments
tellin strangers personal things
summer in the city
i'm so lonely lonely lonely
so i went to a protest
just to rub up against people
and i did feel like comin,
but i also felt like cryin
and it doesn't seem so worth it right now
and the castrated ones stand on the corner smokin
they want to feel the bulges in their pants start to rise
at the sight of a beautiful woman,
they feel nothin but
anger
her skin makes them sick in the night
nauseous nauseous nauseous
oh, summer in the city
i'm so lonely lonely lonely
i been hallucinatin you, babe
at the backs of other women
and i tap them on the shoulder
and they turn around smilin but
there's no recognition in their eyes
oh, summer in the city
means cleavage cleavage cleavage
and don't get me wrong dear
in general i'm doin quite fine
it's just when it's summer in the city
and you're so long gone from the city
i start to miss you, baby, sometimes
oohh
i start to miss you baby, sometimes
i start to miss you, baby
sometimes