Friday, April 10, 2009

Teeth, Spring, Nana, Papa come to Boston


Despite the valiant efforts of relatives to make Rohan into a Pennsylvania boy (with progressively larger Steelers outfits and Nittany Lion shirts), his formative years are sure to mark him as a Beantown native. Most recently, he took his Nana and Papa candlepin bowling (kudos to Mom for her bowling victory) at Sacco's Bowlhaven, a relic of the early 1900s.

Like most of New England's sons and daughters, Rohan will grow up with little wooden balls with no finger holes, no pin resets within frames. He will call this "real" bowling, and he will consider big balls and "duck pins" to be his parents' pastime and therefore démodé.

Nana and Papa brought Rohan a tree swing for our backyard, to mark his first spring. Of course, again, Rohan will grow up thinking that spring starts (in earnest) sometime in May or June. But that doesn't stop his parents from celebrating the end of winter with some old-fashioned swinging and tree-climbing. Forget that the tree does not actually have leaves yet, and that the ground is still pretty bare.

After all, spring technically started at the end of March, in fact, just a few days after Rohan's first teeth appeared. "Now you can eat all kinds of food, going kutush kutush, like a mousie," wrote Rohan's Dimoni, with killing onomatopoeia.

A toothy mouse, and also a mighty mouse -- sitting up by himself now, and rolling all over the place, Rohan today accomplished the Great Escape from his Bumbo seat in order to reach a plastic egg. "Look out, Easter Bunny! Your teeth are nothing compared to mine!"


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