Five(33)

She leans over the side of the crib. He has escaped the swaddle again. She doesn’t know how he does it. He looks like a very small but determined leader of a socialist revolution.

“He’s doing it again, I told you, just like Che,” she says over her shoulder to her half-asleep husband. He opens one eye and sees the little fist waving above the edge of the crib.

“Good boy,” her husband says in his thick Scottish brogue. “Stickin’ it to the man.”

She kisses her extraordinary baby on the forehead. “Viva la revolución,” she says.

When he is four months old, the swaddle is abandoned. Sonny rolls, back to front, front to back, sooner than any other baby in the baby group that his mother takes him to every week. The other babies are content lying on their backs chewing on their hands. Some of them cannot bear even a moment’s separation from their mothers. But she keeps her hand near him, always near him, letting him roll, or wrestle with a set of plastic teether rings, while the other babies greedily feed, or plaintively cry, or lazily sleep on their mothers. And their mothers, looking at her active infant, say to her, “My goodness, he must keep you busy.”

She says to her husband that evening, “So she says that to me, very condescending, and I said, ‘He does, it’s so exciting to have a child who’s so advanced.’ Meanwhile, all their babies are laying there like fat little lumps, crying.” And she and her husband look at their baby Sonny in his bouncer, which he is bouncing with considerable force.

“Ah, those fat little lazy bastard babies, not like my little muscle man. Aren’t you my little muscle man?” her husband says to their baby as Sonny kicks his feet in agreement.

He picks up his son. “He’s perfect, he’s ours,” her husband says, and she loves that when he says, “ours,” it’s like the growl of a bear, the sound of protection.

When Sonny is six months old, he wakes from a nap and pulls himself up to standing using the bars of his crib, then flips over the side and falls out.

His mother hears the thump and runs to his room. She finds him on the floor and rushes to him, hundreds of thoughts flooding her new mother’s brain. But he is not hurt, he is not crying, he is not shocked. He is smiling at her, and if she is not mistaken, he is proud.

“Can you believe this kid?” she says to her husband that night, holding their son. “Maybe he’ll be a gymnast. A stunt man. A pilot.”

“What a strong lad,” he says, and kisses the top of his baby’s head, and when he says strong she hears how much stronger that word is than when other people say it.

At nine months, Sonny is walking. At ten months, he is running. At twelve months, the grandparents and cousins come to the house to celebrate his first birthday. A window is left open in the living room. Adults are distracted, eating, chatting with the other grandchildren and watching them do cartwheels and backbends.

Sonny climbs up the back of the sofa to the sill of the open window. He stares at the world outside and reaches for it. He feels a breeze on his little palm, sees the leaves of the tree in the front of their house rustle, and reaches and reaches. Then he dives.

His mother grabs him by the seat of his trousers just before he jumps, one hand gripping the back of his baby corduroys, the other holding a glass of wine. She hadn’t had time to put it down before she leapt to save him.

As soon as she brings him away from the window he runs off after his cousins. Her dress is soaked in cabernet. The adults are horrified, but when she looks at her husband they both burst out laughing.

“That’s our boy!” her husband says to the room of terrified eyes.

When Sonny is eighteen months old, his mother turns her back to lock the front door, and he runs into the street. A commuter on a bicycle swerves to miss him and swears at her. She swears right back, unconcerned about what her child hears her say.

When he is two, she bends down to tie her shoelace and he runs into the street. A car stops short. The driver swears at her. Sonny swears back.

“That’s right, defend your mother’s honor,” she says, picking him up and flipping the driver off as the car pulls away. But she only wears slip-on shoes when she is out with Sonny after that.

When he is three she is pulled aside at Little Footies soccer class to be told that Sonny is disruptive and does not take turns. She knows he doesn’t take turns. He’s bored. In the time it takes the other children to find the ball before it inevitably rolls past them, he is able to kick it across the whole gym and into the toddler goal. Twice.

“So I said, ‘Actually, I was meaning to speak to you. I think this class is too slow for him. He’s just much more talented than these kids and they’re holding him back,’ and I marched us right out of there.”

“That’s my girl,” he says, and kisses his wife. “They can shove their little footies up their little arsies!” And he swings Sonny round and round in the kitchen.

Sonny starts nursery school. Words are used in reference to their son from the lexicon for bad children, like oppositional, noncompliant, loud. But his parents hear energetic, curious, lively. They are not worried. They don’t care if he doesn’t nap. They love that all he does is run, that he is not interested in rules. To them, these are signs of high intelligence, exceptional creativity. Their little rebel, Sonny, is pure joy, and they will not dampen his spirit to make him color inside the lines.