Red Fleece Pajamas

The “Jesus Action Figure” sat next to the Sigmund Freud Action Figure on the shelf around eyeball height in La Brea, a store on Broadway and 76th Street.  In the front window they had a t-shirt that read, “Blah Blah Blah…” that we thought about getting for cousin Martin since he had popularized that phrase in our family when he was but five.

Mind you, this Jesus doll was not a mere nodding bobble-head bust that sits on a dashboard or bookshelf.  No, this was a full-on action figure that had movable arms, legs, waist and neck.  First-century cloak.  Sandals.

 

Nevertheless, I wondered what kind of body articulation by Freud could be expected compared with that of the Messiah?  Or even justified.  I mean, didn’t Freud essentially sit in a chair and nod at his patients’ revelations?  He didn’t need a movable waist, or legs, or left arm.  He simply could take notes - he would need a note pad:  nice accessory to the toy - so warranted only a movable right wrist.  Couldn’t the psychoanalyst be made as a bobble-head instead of an action figure?  Seems the consumer is paying for a lot of unnecessary functionalities here.  I’m just saying.

 

We had stopped in the store as we walked back from “Horton Hears a Who, “which all five of us went to in celebration for Teak’s fifth birthday.

 

We did all right and the boys made it through the flick without any mishaps, with the minor exception of Bennett, who had to pee during the scene when Kangaroo was making a backroom deal with Vlad the evil eagle to whack Whoville.  I suppose I can’t be too disappointed to have missed that part, which I had seen plenty on the TV trailer anyway, because ten years ago the Lovely K and I saw “City of Angels” with Nicholas Cage and Meg Ryan in the same theater and I had to miss a key scene because I, too, had to… well, you know.  “City of Angels” was long, though, and that was different.  K didn’t ask me repeatedly if I “had to go” before the movie, and when leaving the apartment, and double-checking one more time before the movie started.  All right, I’ll let it go.  It was just an eagle talking with a kangaroo after all.

 

“City of Angels” starts with a crushing scene of a mother watching her 4-year-old girl slowly slipping away on a hospital operating table.  The girl’s soul leaves her body and she meets up with Nick Cage the angel - is he the coolest at roles like this, or what?! - and they dialogue.

 

She looks at him and asks, “Are you God?”

 

“No.  My name is Seth.”

 

“Where are we going?”

 

“Home.”

 

“Can Mommy come?”

 

“No.”

 

“She won’t understand.”

 

“She will…someday.”  Silence as they walk down the hospital corridor together.  “Can I ask you something?” he asks the girl.

 

“Yes.”

 

“What did you like best?”

 

Pause.

 

“Pajamas.”

 

The movie devolves then in typical Hollywood fashion, but at least they got off to a good start.  I have always remembered that scene.  In fact, I think I tolerated the rest of the schmaltzy plot because of that opening scene, which had the tenderness and the frivolity and the candor and honesty of children exposed that anyone who has been around kids knows well.  It also had embedded in it the trajectory of the infinite, and the divine.

 

My son Teak and I read books at night lying on our backs on his lower bunk.  I hold them up and read them to him.  Of course, books containing dinosaurs - preferably theropods who personally know Sandra Boynton - are among his favorites.  He knows one by heart, so he “reads” it to me.

 

Lately, though, he has taken to the Time magazine series of books that have nearly identical photos on opposite pages, except that in the one on the right, the boy is playing miniature golf holding a baseball bat and in the left it’s a regular golf club; in the photo on the right there’s a blue handkerchief sticking out of the mother’s purse and on the left it’s red.  Find the changes or oddities in the photos.  There are sometimes up to ten, and Teak gets them every time…sometimes with a little help from his ad hoc adult bunk-mate of course.  Then he counts the changes he’s accrued starting at one, and his voice always goes into a high-pitched squeak on the number “One” that is never annoying, always cute, and will be of course short-lived.

 

Seven-year-old Bennett said to K the night before Teak’s birthday, “If Teak’s voice isn’t different by the morning, I’ll be shocked.”

 

“Why?”

 

“A five year old…with a voice like that?!!”  The ignominy of it all.  The assault on the family reputation.  I just hope the neighbors don’t hear him counting.

 

Teak usually decides when he’s finished reading, which is normally at three or four photos, or five short dinosaur books of spiny-lumpy-short-and-grumpy.  Later in the evening, when I go back upstairs to tell his older brothers to stop reading and turn off their lights, Teak is always asleep, his red fleece pajamas contrasting against his porcelain skin.

 

I lean over.  Stroke his hair away from his ear.  Kiss his cheek, softly as though his face would crack if I pressed any harder.  I look down at him.

 

Content.

 

picture:  Freud, by Dali; photo:  benedeki