The Bananas

Recently we’ve been doing a child swap with the Paisleys. Max comes here one week and Sam goes to Max’s the other. It’s nice.

They get along great although they couldn’t be more different from each other: Max likes his hands clean; Sam likes to dump and spread. Dave calls them Felix and Oscar—they are the Odd Couple. Even though Max has perfect diction and a larger vocabulary than most adults, he still seeks Sam’s advice, “Can I pick my nose, Sam?”

Watching Max hop into Sam’s crib for his every-other-week bounce, paw through our CD collection, and point to the cupboard with the nutty bars has given me a dose of déjà vu.

Our childhood friendships give us that rare opportunity to be steeped in someone else’s family life.

When I was a kid, my friends’ houses were this amalgamation of mystery and familiarity. In Michele’s pantry, her mother kept a never ending supply of vanilla wafers vs. at Gaby’s house, her father served food that seemed to come from a field rather than the supermarket—wild rice and berries. At Tiffany’s house you could jump from bed to bed while her asthmatic brother tried to keep up. Some houses you could scoot down the rug covered stairs on your bottom; and hidden in the attic of one, you could page through dusty medical journals with pictures of weird skin conditions. Denise had a pool with a giant bubble over it. Dink had 3 older sisters that made every sleep over seem like the eve of a grand ball. And at Becky’s house, we’d sit on the deck, listen to Van Halen, and eat yogurt mixed with brown sugar as if we were already 20 yrs. old.

This summer while we were in Ashland, Brigid and Rex reminisced about Quale house—loud, messy, and spirited. And yet, my friends didn’t seem separate from my family life. They became so thoroughly ensconced in our daily rituals, they were players. No childhood memory is complete unless it includes Cooper coming through our kitchen window to have the last brown banana.

And so the cycle begins with Sam. When he comes home from Max’s house, he tells me where the cat hides, and how Margaret piles pillows beneath the ottoman so they can jump, and that Mary likes to pick berries but “you can’t eat them.” They eat waffles for lunch.

And here at this house, we take Max to Pinky Park to build snow castles. Sam and I immediately become engrossed. Max holds his distance and observes. I saw us through his eyes: two happy idiots trying to amass dry snow that blew away or crumbled before we could build anything, yelling at the snow, directing each other to no avail—loud, messy and spirited. Right then I wished I had a banana to give him.

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