Tata, Mamou, the Spider Incident, and Chicago

It's been awhile since I posted something new, so the title is actually a reference to three incidents...

Evan began speech therapy this week. His new speech pathologist, Tanya, is a slight blond-haired soft-voiced lady who wears mocassins. To prepare Evan for his first visit, I'd told him: "Evan and Mama are going to play some games and practice your talking with a new friend named Tanya." His reply: "No, Mama; no Tata." It ended up that he had a very good time with Tata anyway-- they played about 5 or 6 different toys in 45 minutes-- car garage, Play-doh, barn, and doll house. Evan was reaching for the bin of beans when it was time to go. I think he'll go for that one first next time, because it's similar to the rice box Gaga Patty made for him.

Lately, Evan's going through some sort of Latin or French phase, which must stem from one of his previous lives. Without any prompting or suggestion, he's moved from calling me "Mama" to calling me "Mamou." If we look at a picture of a lady in a book, or see a woman on the street, she is "Mama." Any man is "Dada." Any woman or man above a certain age is "Gaga," and any woman older than "Gaga" is "Gigi." I feel sort of special that he's invented a nickname for me-- since I've never had one that stuck... not any that I want to repeat, anyway.

Yesterday, a beautiful fall day, Evan and I were playing outside. I was pushing his shopping cart, and he was pushing his lawnmower. At one point, I stopped to point out a big spider crawling through the grass. "Look, Evan! A spider!" I said excitedly. He crouched down, got a close look at it, poked it lightly with his finger, stood up again, thought for a minute, and then exclaimed, "SHOE!" and crushed it with the force of a boulder annihilating an innocent flower. Once back inside the house, the conversation went as follows:

Mamou: Evan, tell Dada. Did you see a spider outside?
Evan, nodding and smiling enthusiastically: Uh-HUH!
Mamou: And what did you do with the spider?
Evan, stilling smiling, lifting his little Spiderman sneaker off the floor: Dada, SHOE!

Tomorrow, Mamou is off to Chicago to visit friend Wendy, The Omnisicent Reader, who is in a doc program at UIC. I nickname her thus because she is the one person, other than me, who actually read every single page of the fiction halfuscript (it's a HALFuscript because it's only HALF a book, if that) I slaved in vain over during the Dublin Adventure. I'm going to class with her tomorrow night. Hopefully there'll be some version of PhD. student show-and-tell, and she can be like, "This is my friend, Po' Bastard, whose minimal, measly Master's degree has allowed her to hit the academic glass ceiling, as a perma-temp instructor, at only 29 years old." Ha.

All that aside, I love my job. No, I don't rake in the money. And yeah, I have a lot of debts-- and someday those'll get paid off. But I feel important every day, and like what I do matters to the immediate good moment and to the greater, future good.

What can I say. I change lives everywhere I go. To Chicago and beyond!