Dear Ethan,
You have just turned 3. You are an incredibly sweet, empathetic, affectionate, stubborn, wonderful boy, the best son a mama could ask for. You are a bit frustrated lately, from having whirring thoughts in your mind that just won’t come out. For your birthday, we had a BIG pancake day with only people that you like.

Pancake days started because you had a hard time figuring out the routine, what day of the week it was, where you were going, what happened next, and you were too young to understand the days of the week, so Monday-Friday are school days, and Saturday and Sundays are pancake day, all day. You spend Friday nights at your nannas, so that I can catch up on work till 8 or 9, occasionally catch up on cleaning, go act my age for a few hours, and because I am a better mama to you after Friday night off. Your nanna loves you so much, and Friday nights she can spend the entire time focused completely on you. You are a master chef.

Two days ago you counted to eleven, counting tablespoons of imaginary powder. I would’ve praised you, but I was just so awestruck, I just stared and tried to sear that moment permanently in my brain to keep me warm when I get cold. One night, you were just so frustrated, by moving, by changing schools, daycare had kept you so centered, I couldn’t assuage you, much as I tried, I’m too often too spent to have enough brainpower to figure out a solution, let alone put it into action.

Piled around us are moving boxes, mostly unpacked, because I have to be ready to move at any moment, any day now everything will come together, the house grant will come through, I’ll save up enough and the perfect house will come along, fenced yard to play all summer in, close to the park, decent school, with decent special ed, and I’ll be ready to go, because I will not have unpacked. To me the moving boxes are hope, to you they are confusing. So I unpacked a few and dug out an exacto knife. I built you a kitchen out of the empty moving boxes, a fridge out of a three shelf bookcase and liquor store moving boxes, a stove with 2 burners, a sink (with Nanna’s popcorn bowl for a nice big basin, don’t tell her) .

I searched online for pictures of play kitchens and found some really expensive dream kitchen. I printed the picture and tore at cardboard, a bit sad, thinking about all of the things I have not been able to give you. Would you even know it was supposed to be a kitchen? It looks a helluva lot like a pile of trash I forgot to take out. I stocked it with plastic silverware and dollar groceries I got from target months back, but they didn’t make much sense without a kitchen. You were annoyed while I worked on it, all you ever want is for me to play with you, but I wanted to give you something to play with, something that would make this waystation, this stopover, this waiting period somehow better than the cramped but organized, messy but ours apartment, that I sublet to “Cheech and Chong”. (the night they helped me move in, one of them, trying to show off, burned rubber on the pavement and accidentally drove backwards smashing into chong behind him, blowing out his jeep headlights (with half of our belongings in the bed of his pickup. Free moving help is free moving help.)

You got up the next morning, and bless you, you loved it, thank god. You’re obsessed with it. You know it’s a kitchen. I lose faith sometimes, but then you remind me. My boss bought you a kitchen set at Bed Bath and Beyond, which is funny, perfectly die cast little pie and muffin tin, shiny red matching measuring spoons, mini whisk and two perfect wooden spoons, came neatly organized in a shiny clear vinyl carrying case...

now scattered about the ragged mismatched cardboard pile of cheap vodka boxes. Thank god you know it’s a kitchen.
Saturdays, at 7 I wake up like clockwork, I’ve never been able to wake up easily, but Saturday mornings, my body and brain jolt awake and say where’s Ethan, where’s Ethan, where’s Ethan. Nanna tried to let me sleep in one Saturday, but I kept rolling over, looking at the clock, feeling silly (and tired).

Moe and I drive to Nanna’s and pick you up, she’ got the life sized version of the dream kitchen. I ask for a hug, you ask where’s Momo? Outside, I say and then you’ll hug me and you show me around, you show me nanna’s house, one of your many worlds away from me, and I am glad that you are loved here, and that you bake cookies here, and that you are here soaking up undivided attention here on Friday nights. And you cry when we leave.

But it’s "beepeek" day, pancake day. We go out for pancakes. (You don’t like pancakes, you just like pancake day and in keeping with the name, you insist on ordering them for breakfast.) You know it’s pancake day when I ignore the alarm that I forgot to reset for the weekend. Moe and I order two breakfasts and pancakes, strong coffee, and have the waitress set the whole thing down in the middle of the table. We all reach over eachother and eat off of eachother’s plates. You crawl under the table, switching back and forth between us. We drive home and you fall asleep on the way. We all nap until half the day is gone, and then complain that half the day is gone. And then it’s doo-doo-dains at the boodor. Ms. 30 something, matching leather jacket and killer boots mom scolds her Einstein babe that “no silly, you know that’s not Thomas, that’s Percy, when he confuses the boxcars. We can at least agree that the brown smudge on the floor may indeed not be brownie from the café.

And I’ll carry your sweet body to bed. Sometimes you’re such a big boy, and then I strip you naked for a bath and am struck by how tiny your body is, that you’re still a baby, with the weight of the world on your shoulders, I try to carry the burden and cocoon you, but sometimes the weight presses you, too soon, and you keep a stiff upper lip.
I hope that it’s enough.