secrets

Depending upon whom I'm talking to, I either gently jeer at the psychobabble of The Secret and its wide-eyed followers, or happily dither on about its inherent truth. (because of this thing. c'mon, you do it too.)

But even my most witheringly skeptical persona has to admit that something is going on with Anainn. Scarcity simply does not exist for this child. Caretakers, organic baby food, rocking chairs come out of the woodwork. I took this child up into the mountains on one of the many occasions when I was trying to figure my life out. We ran into Tom Hanks on the trail. He offered to babysit (this really happened).

This--talent? magnetism? destiny?--shouldn't still surprise me, but it does. As I buckled Anainn into the bike seat today, preparatory to our long ride to pick up Xir from school, he announced that he wanted to bring his 'pihih peh' (pillow pet, for the uninitiated). I explained at length that there was no way he could carry it on the bike and his father wouldn't let him keep it and blaah blah blah blah blah, biking away. Anainn took it in good grace, simply remarking 'pihih peh' twice more, matter-of-factly, at various points on the ride.

We arrived early and had time to stop at the bagel store on the corner near Xir's school. Anainn stood in line smiling sunnily at each customer until his eyes lit on a woman near the window. She became the focus of a full-on charm assault, until finally she walked over and patted him on the head.

"Could you wait here a moment?" she asked me. "I have something in my car I'd like to give him." She returned with a white plastic bag and opened it to reveal---you guessed it---a brand-new pillow pet. Anainn hugged it to him and beamed up at me.

'Pihih peh,' he stated. Then he toddled out the door, fully entitled, just a wisp of blond hair and two stubby legs and an enormous stuffed panda bear.