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Feathers
The first time I went to the park with Jack, I discovered he chased birds.
A pigeon would land, and Jack would run at it like an enraged pirate with two peg-legs, screaming secret obscenities only another preschooler would have understood, yet the intensity of which made me blush.
"Scroop! Grub-fra scree! Pigeon!"
The targeted pigeon would flap away as Jack made a final lunge, yet Jack would taunt in victory, "Hak! Stupid pigeon!"
Then he would squat low and scan the ground where the bird had been.
I asked Jack's mom, "What is he doing?"
"Looking for feathers."
"What?"
"For his collection."
I wondered about a mother who would let her four and a half year old child gather fallen bird feathers, but when the sunlight came through the canopy of leaves over us, back-lighting her curls of auburn hair, I wondered other things about Jack's mom.
After Jack had chased dozens of pigeons and collected three shabby feathers, he was exhausted. He asked me, "Can I ride on your shoulders?"
I hoisted him over my head and set him on my shoulders-- and got whacked in both ears. Gritting my teeth, I managed to ask civilly, "What do you have in your pockets, Jack?"
"Rocks."
Dazed, I reached behind my ringing ears and patted hard mounds in the pockets of Jack's red sweatpants. "His pockets are filled with rocks!"
"I know," Jack's mom said, and reached into Jack's pockets.
"Jack honey, we have to take some out."
"Not that one!" He snatched back one rock from the handful she had extracted. "That's the best."
Before she could close her hand Jack extracted two more stones, each also, "the best".
Jack's mom laughed and said, "Sometimes he's carrying so many rocks his pants fall down."
As we walked, Jack bonded with me by pulling the hairs on the back of my neck and grinding his chin into the top of my head.
I asked him, "Jack, what are the rocks for?"
"For my collection."
Chestnuts
It was October when I came to live with Jack and his mom.
Each morning I would walk them to the bus stop, where under a gnarled old chestnut tree, Jack would gather fallen nuts. He worked methodically, pausing to examine each nut, tossing aside the rejects, until he had stuffed his pockets--and mine--and his mother's--with keepers.
Some mornings there would be an old Asian woman under the chestnut tree, methodically filling a canvas bag with nuts for cooking.
On the street, cars whooshed by. The drivers, staring straight ahead, were rushing to get inside of the offices, shops and factories they would spend the day in. They did not see the old woman and the young boy gathering nuts beneath the tree.
Those drivers, isolated in their hurry, missed so much.
Corks
Until I lived with Jack, I never knew the cold, wet months of winter were ideal for the indoor sport of collecting wine corks.
To this particular collection of Jack's, I've made a considerable contribution. Yet, although extensive, the collection is rather monotonous. In the boxes Jack keeps on shelves in his bedroom there are only a few exotic, mushroom-like champagne corks, and dozens of dull, straight corks from the cheapest Spanish or Italian or Californian wines.
Once, while walking the dogs with Jack, I stopped at a neighborhood store."Why are we going in here?" Jack asked.
"I want to buy some wine."
"Mom can buy it when she goes shopping."
"Well, they have cheap wine here. It'll only take a minute, Jack."
As I perused the dust covered jugs of bad wines within my budget, I told Jack, "Don't wander off."
"I won't."
I selected my cheap wine, then searched for Jack, who had immediately wandered off. I found him in the back of the store, gawking at shelves filled with plastic toys, cap guns, fluorescent colored boomerangs, water balloons and temporary tattoos of dragons and skulls and motorcycles.
"Ah, Jack. You've discovered the Made In China aisle."
"What?"
"When I was a boy, I would buy these same cheap toys at a store in my town."
"You couldn't have," Jack said. "These toys are new."
When we got home, Jack told his mom about the amazing toys in the little store. I listened while pouring two glasses of wine.
Jack asked, "Can I have the cork?"
"There isn't one," I said.
His mother explained, "Cheap wine usually has a metal cap."
"No cork?"
"Sorry, Jack," I said, and meant it. "Next time I'll buy better wine."
Weeks later, Jack asked me, "When are we going to the cheap wine store again?"
"But cheap wine doesn't have corks," I reminded him.
"That's okay," he said. "I want to buy one of the cheap toys."
Bicycles
Last Spring I tried to induce Jack to ride his bicycle without training wheels. "Look at those big kids zooming by us without training wheels, Jack!"
"So?"
I had to admire his dismissal of peer pressure. So I tried logic.
"You know, Jack, the word bi-cycle means 'two wheels'.
"Four wheels is easier to balance."
A few days later, I thought of a way I might use Jack's impulse to collect as a motivator. I got up early the next Saturday and quietly removed the training wheels from Jack's bike. Of course, Jack noticed in his first glance at the bike. But I was prepared. I said, "Jack: I'll give you five pogs for every lap you ride around our block-- without training wheels."
I held my breath, waiting for his reaction.
"What's a lap?" he asked.
I explained.
That morning, I jogged at least two miles, first beside, and soon behind, Jack, as he did laps around the block. Sometimes he would crash. I would cringe. I would jog up to him and coax, "Just a little farther, Jack, and you'll get another five pogs."
When he would stop crying long enough to stomp and curse, "Stupid bike!", I knew he was all right.
And he kept getting back on the bike.
By late morning, I was sitting on the porch. Jack was racing his bike around the block. Each time he passed me he would wobble dangerously while shouting out the number of pogs I owed him.
His mom smiled. "You've taught him how to count by fives."
Marbles
As Jack neared seven years old, his collecting impulse diminished. I seldom saw him opening the boxes on his shelves and spilling the treasures of rocks, feathers, chestnuts, corks, rubber bands, pogs, marbles, postcards, and pictures clipped from magazines onto the floor to arrange them, play with them, or simply stare entranced at them, the way he used to.
I tried hiding his collectibles in places he would find them. The first time Jack discovered a cork in his sneaker, he only scratched his head and said, "Now, how'd that get in there?"
Soon enough, when getting into bed, Jack would check his pillow for hidden corks. When dressing in the morning he would look inside his sneakers and jeans for chestnuts or small rocks I had tucked there. Each time Jack found a hidden collectible he would scowl at me, and I would swear innocence and amazement. We liked the new game, but it didn't revive Jack's passion for his collections.
It took me a while to accept that the golden days of Jack's snatching up some found item "for my collection" were past. Now, something he might have collected two years ago, is seldom more than a spontaneous prop.
Like the morning he came downstairs with a yellow marble wedged into his right nostril.
"Jack. Take that out."
"Watch! I can tie my shoes and it won't fall."
I watched. As Jack tied his shoes, I heard a car horn out front
.
"You're ride to school is here."
"Watch. I can walk outside and it won't fall."
I carried his backpack, opened the front door for him, and walked behind, ready to catch him if he tripped on the porch steps.
As Jack negotiated the sloping yard--his head leaned so far back he reminded me of a trained seal balancing a ball on its snout--I said, "Don't sneeze at any of the kids in school."
The perfect straight man, Jack asked, "Why?"
"You could put someone's eye out."
"What?"
"Never mind."
I opened the door of the waiting car for Jack. Jack shouted, "Look, Peter!"
His schoolmate's mouth dropped open.
Having achieved maximum appreciation from Peter, Jack pushed his face toward Peter's mom and shouted, "Look!"
She stared at the yellow marble in Jack's nostril. "That's nice, Jack."
As I buckled Jack into the back seat, Peter clamored for the yellow marble. He wanted to try ramming it in his nostril.
"No," Peter's mom said.
I said, "Jack, we really have to take it out now. That isn't safe in the car."
All his objectives achieved, Jack was reasonable; he snorted the marble into my hand.
As they drove away I waved with one hand, the wet marble in my other.
Laundry
That same day, while in the basement doing laundry, I realized how I was finding fewer and fewer 'collectibles' in the pockets of Jack's dirty clothes.
I told myself that Jack's collecting urge was a casualty of the increasing complexity of a growing boy's life. Each day, so many new wonders and challenges claimed his attention and energy. Yet I also recalled how stern and angry I had been with him, after a succession of "laundry disasters" caused by crayons left in his pockets melting in the dryer. And I remembered, painfully, a walk on the beach with Jack when I had refused to carry anymore feathers or crabs or shells for him after his own pockets were bulging with booty. How much had I contributed to Jack's losing his impulse to collect?
I took an empty plastic container from the recycling bin and put it in the back of the cupboard above the washer and dryer. I then took that morning's yellow marble from my shirt pocket, and dropped it in the container.
In the ensuing weeks, my secret collection slowly grew.
My hidden container soon held paper clips twisted into pretzels; erasers in the shapes of fish; candy wrappers; golden wings that airline stewardesses and co-pilots had pinned on Jack; psychedelic buttons with slogans like, "Radical, dude!"; rocks, lots of rocks; washing-machined pogs; rubber bands; plastic twine Jack uses to make woven jewelry called "gimp"; twigs; chestnuts; popsicle sticks (most with tiny faces inked or penciled on them); an assortment of nuts, bolts and miniature balls.
For me, my new collection is a kind of time travel. The random ephemera of Jack's very young life--the mundane stuff that winds up in his pockets--has the power to transport me. I hold these small objects and I savor, again, take delight in, again, what I know is gone, forever.
Now, on those increasingly rare days that I find something in the pockets of Jack's dirty clothes, I look at the object as if seeing it for the first time. It is a sweet, secret enjoyment I experience, when I examine a broken-off pencil stub; a red, blue and orange Creepy Crawler spider; or a Batman action-figure that Jack has--for unfathomable reasons--mummified in green yarn, with only Batman's gloved hands and the ears of his cowl sticking out of the yarn.
Each time I drop the reclaimed treasure into my hidden container I whisper, "For my collection."
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