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Playing Favorites
Who said it was fair?
by Stephanie Piper
As any parent of more than one child will attest, life with multiple children is not fair.
The oldest gets the green-as-grass parents, the ones with the instruction book and the theories and the serious lack of clues. The second gets the broken-in version, the reins a bit looser, the rules beginning to bend. By the time the third appears, it’s a whole different ball game.
“You favor him so much. It’s not fair.” There was a time when that was a kind of Greek chorus in our house, repeated daily by one or another of my three sons. Why does the youngest get to watch cartoons and eat Captain Crunch when the older two were never (according to their total recall) permitted such indulgences? To hear them tell it, they grew up on short rations in some kind of Dickensian workhouse.
They were half-right. I did have favorites. I still do. But it is fair, because everyone gets a turn. I’m not talking about better Christmas presents or bigger birthday parties or a larger share in our wills. I’m pretty scrupulous about things like that, the way I used to be scrupulous about portions of chocolate pudding or pieces of cake. And I’m not talking about love, which is immeasurable and defies apportionment.
I’m talking about moments in the sun. I’m talking about little islands of time when I just like one kid best.
I think of mornings when my youngest was a baby, the house silent, the older children off to school. We would sit in the living room and rock together, drifting back into sleep, his breath sweet against my cheek. It was he and I and the morning stillness. For that hour, there was no room for anyone else.
Sometimes my favorite is the child I need right now, this minute. I remember a dreary, forgotten birthday of mine, rescued by my second son and a gift of two green candles. He rode his bike to town to buy them with a dollar he’d scrimped from his allowance. Eight years old, broke, and an hour late getting home from school, he stood in the kitchen and lit them for me. Decades later, I can still see his face at that moment. There were other presents that night, a cake, a last-minute celebration. But just then, that boy was my numero uno.
Sometimes it’s the meeting of the minds that does it, a flash of kindred feelings. My firstborn and I shared a day in New York one August long ago. We walked the hot streets together, comparing notes on the city of my youth, the city where he’d spent the summer. He showed me the deli where he bought bagels, the club with the best music, his favorite brownstone. We picked out the houses we’d buy if we had $20 million. We lingered over coffee and swapped urban memories. There was, that afternoon, no one else I wished to see.
I do not tell my children that I feel the same way about each of them. It would be a lie. They are three different people, and they affect me in different ways. The one I love to cook with would never watch old movies with me the way his brother does. And the one who makes me laugh until I cry will never share my reverence for French or Masterpiece Theater or the 1937 edition of Emily Post. Different sons, different seasons.
Do I have a favorite? Definitely. But don’t ask me to name him. He changes from day to day.
July 8, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 28
© 2004 Metro Pulse
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