The Mermaid Returns

Almost a year had passed since the final slap of Ariel's emerald tail. The mermaid had taken a dive to the depths of Reeve's infant pre-memory. Our car, bedtimes, and heads were Little-Mermaid free. We had gotten as close to forgetting her as Disney lets anyone forget.

Reeve had undergone many changes. He busted out of his crib to a big boy bed in a room shared with Duncan. "Scooby Doo" and "Tom and Jerry" now reigned as monster antics ran roughshod over delicate watery longings in my 2-year old's heart. This made sense: Reeve had just solidified his physical powers and wanted one thing -- to run. Scooby and the Gang's encounters with monsters resembled, almost exactly, our house just before dinner when Daddy was required, arms raised, to give chase to little boys with throaty grunts promising doom. As a "Free To Be You and Me" Mom with Jungian tendencies, I sighed quietly as my son's tender anima seemed to follow the mermaid under the sea.

It was around Memorial Day this year when we drove to New Hampshire to open the house for the summer. Maybe the spring green leaves out Reeve's window brought him back to the season when she departed. Maybe he spotted the royal blue CD in the case. Maybe it was the rock where water and shore meet at his grandparents' cabin on the edge of Goose Pond, which Reeve declared out of the blue to be "just lika Awiel's wock!" But there is no doubt: As mysteriously as she disappeared, Ariel is back.

With one important clarification: I (mother, putter-of-children-to-sleep, karaoke-max qualified singer, etc.) am NOT the mermaid. I certainly may not sing her song. I may not even sing along to the CD in the car. (See Rickety Ladder "My Run As a Mermaid," Oct. 2009.)

Reeve alone sings now. And it is abundantly clear that I never was the star, my spotlight the delusional fantasy of a sleep-deprived parent. I was has-been teacher to the prodigy. I was Bette Davis' Margo to Reeve's Eve. And I couldn't be more delighted to cede the part.

OK, I do not delight that the CD is back on endless loop in the car, but I tolerate it because Reeve's performance is ground-breaking. In the early weeks of the return, Reeve's powers of speech had not yet caught up to the tempo and vocabulary; hence, the early performances consisted of loud, undifferentiated open-mouthed signing, punctuated by outbursts of confidence:

"Uhnnn -uhhhnnn -- uhnnn ---
And why does it Uhnn uhhn uhhn BURN?!
Uhhn uhhn uhhn TURN?
Uhhnn Uhnn Uhhn LOVE?"

Bit by bit the words have filled in, sometimes with astonishing articulation. What do you say to your toddler staring you down in the rear-view mirror as he intones:

"I'm weady to know what da people know, aksing my questions 'n get some ansahs!"

Sometimes, when he's sleepy, Reeve will go into a silent trance as he listens. Thus is it all the more startling when he suddenly wails: WISH I COULD BE PART OF YOUR WORLD!

Reeve has moved beyond Ariel's aria of longing too, a welcome development. He now sings along with Sebastian about how it's "hotter under the water!" and the sadistic French chef as he consoles the "leetle feeshes" that "it won't hurt 'cause your dead!" Best of all are the instrumental passages during which he relives the entire operatic narrative, singing with the strings section, "SIMM SIMM SIM-SIM-SIM SIMM SIMM SIM-SIM-SIM!" He'll interrupt to ask: "Mommy, is this when the BIG storm hits Eric's ship?" (I have no idea.) And he'll require re-play of certain tracks when a narrative element grips his attention, such as, "Play the one when Ursula comes to the ship!" Jordy and I look at each other, "Uh, honey, is that track 17 or 18?" "I don't know, try 17." We try it. From the back seat,"NOT THAT ONE!!!" And the clock is ticking -- track 18? NO! We try 19. NO! We must find it before Reeve breaks down in hysterics. It must feel to him that the story goes on without him, the way it felt before On-Demand TV when you had to choose between peeing and missing part of your favorite show.

To ease the transition back to Brooklyn after a free-form summer in New Hampshire, I bought each of the boys the toy of their heart's desire. Duncan got two packs of "Yugio" cards. Reeve chose, of course, an Ariel Barbie Doll.

She's exquisite. Like her Barbie sisters, she has an impossibly hot figure. Her hair is an eruption of red lusciousness (it is actually red, not "red" as in orange) that is particularly gorgeous to watch swirl in the bath water. Her "mum-mums," as my boys call breasts, are covered by a little purple bikini top that is wont to fall off. Her eyes are blue "just like Baby Tuckah's!" and she is possessed of a smile that never dims. She eats breakfast at the table with Reeve. She sleeps with Reeve. The mermaid who once longed simply to walk on a (what's that word again?) street now goes everywhere.

Ariel's most arresting feature, however, is her removable mermaid tail. OK, the sexual overtones and undertones of The Little Mermaid tale (and tail) are ridiculous and fascinating, above all because Disney chose to amp it to the max and got away with it under its brand of wholesome family fun. (We visited Ariel in her grotto at Disney World with Duncan at age 3. It was a bit creepy as she tickled him, calling him her "little Flounder" while her purple-conch covered breasts thrust themselves at him. Duncan was terrified. Jordy concluded that the "Ariel Exhibit" was Disney's enticement to Dads to suffer the rest of the theme park.) Really, where to begin? And I don't want to become an arm-chair neo-Freudian deconstructing my child's beloved plaything. Truthfully I don't know what Reeve's 3 & 1/2-year old mind makes of female bodies or his own.

What I see is that he wants to change her -- then change her back. Again and again, to the point where the shine of her little fabric tail is losing its luster. He can deftly remove the tail, but putting it back on still requires help.

Maybe this metamorphosis speaks to Reeve's inaccessible, though recent, memories of learning to walk. Maybe it speaks to the thrill and terror he feels now as he learns to swim, revisiting the strange boomy, inchoate underwater realm of an even more inaccessible memory. Since he was 14 months old Reeve has enjoyed standing by the water's edge, fishing pole (denuded of hook) in hand, contemplating the realm beyond water's surface. This summer, with hook, he caught his first fish to the shock of us all. Reeve's jumping body bespoke the awe he felt in discovering the power to extract a living creature from the water. As he watched it swim frantic circles in its tupperware tank, Reeve declared "I'm gonna keep it forevah! I'm gonna cook it for suppah!" -- a logical impossibility with which his elder brother confronted him. Reeve thought a moment, then rejected such stuck-in-the-box thinking. "I'm gonna keep it forevah! I'm gonna cook it for suppah!" he declared as if Duncan simply didn't get it.

Sometimes Reeve's passion for Ariel looks like pure devotion: He gazes at her with the wonder of a little man in love. Other times his passion looks like pure identification; they are one and the same. Maybe passion is exactly this convergence.

Yesterday as Ariel rode with us to Costco, Reeve pulled her tail off for the umpteenth time. "Mommy, Look!" he announced, as if this were a novel event. But then, and this part was new, "I made her human." Not a person. Not a girl. Not even "a" human. Just, human. In the rear view I watched him watch her seriously, as if trying to figure out what that meant.

Then, "Can we get Scooby Doo yoguhts at the stowah?"