Curry-poached salmon and the ultimate mom fail: burning your kid!

It’s fall in San Francisco, which means heat waves and wildfires. Yet, during the morning and evening hours, the air is cooler and easier to bear. The oak tree the Friends of the Urban Forest planted in front of our house fifteen years ago is producing a bumper crop of acorns. The branches, which nearly touch our windows, are astir with scrub jays, crows, and squirrels. Acorns rain down all day, plonking onto the sidewalk and our heads.

The city has shut down our block to replace the sewer main, which has led to a reprieve from speeding cars. The workers are quick and efficient, and it’s a wonder to watch them direct massive yellow machines with precision.

Two weeks ago I finished a major project. The difference between how I feel now, with enough sleep, and how I’ve felt for the past six months — so sleep-deprived I was reminded of maternity leave — is game-changing. I have certainly calmed from when I thought we were going to Hawaii this year and put this item on my calendar: “Pack, including cinch for GB in case of rogue wave.” Also, after a few misfires, I’m deeply into a good book, Before Night Falls, by Reinaldo Arenas.

My stepdaughter turned eleven, I turned forty-four, and Gargantubaby is a very large three and a quarter. Yesterday morning, I repaid him for all the ways he’s enriched my life by leaving the teapot on the counter as he sat beside the stove to help me make his oatmeal. He tipped it with his hands, and a confused look — Is this pain? — crossed his face before he started screaming. I went into autopilot — I’ve been preparing for emergencies since the day he was born — and swept him into the bathroom, dropped him in the tub, and sprayed his leg with cold water until I could tell his pajamas weren’t stuck to him and I could take them off. I woke up SJ to call Kaiser, then went back to the bathroom and sprayed some more.

By the time we got through to the advice nurse, Gargantubaby had calmed and lay naked between us on the couch as we took instructions on how to care for the skin that would inevitably peel. As we attempted to spread aloe on his skin, he repeated, with a scrunched-up face, “I am not in a great mood for this!” Thankfully, it’s a first-degree burn. Still, I’m fired.

I canceled my plans for the day and took Gargantubaby with me to pick up some Halloween costume items from my local Buy Nothing group.

We had a picnic beside a Monterey cypress off the golf course in Sea Cliff, and GB snuggled in my lap in his fleecy costume, a total pleasure and a sure sign he was exhausted from the morning. Then he actually walked the El Camino Del Mar Trail all the way to the stairs, stopping every few inches to climb on a log or sit in the dirt.

On the drive home, he said, “I promise I won’t tip over the teapot again.”

My heart hit the windshield. “That wasn’t your fault,” I said. “That was Mommy’s fault. I shouldn’t have left the teapot on the counter.”

He seemed to accept this, but silence only means he’s working things out.

When we got home, I had to talk to a couple more nurses because the bandage had stuck to the wound, and every time I was transferred to someone new, I began with, “We burned him today.” Flagellation starts at home! I kept expecting a nurse to ask me a CPS-themed series of questions, such as, “Do you often feel angry with your child?,” but everyone was very nice.

At nap time, GB dropped right off to sleep. At bedtime, he revealed he was still trying to work out what had happened. In the dark, he said, “It was my fault the teapot spilled today.”

When I first had a kid, I was on alert for all the ways the outside world could hurt my son. Yesterday I felt a sick adjustment at the realization I could be the one who hurt him the most.

Lately, Gargantubaby has been using the words “bad” and “good” to describe himself, when we deliberately don’t use those words (as far as I can remember) to describe anything, let alone him. His lyric, when he makes up songs, is, “I don’t know if I’m bad or good, I just don’t knooooow.” (He also strums on his ukelele and sings, “Sing my song about my whole liiiiife,” which I find oddly spot-on for songwriting.)

One morning when GB woke up, he said, “I’m trying to be good.” It so took me by surprise that I said, “You are good,” even though I’ve promised myself not to call him bad or good, or to describe what he’s doing as bad or good, so he won’t seek outside validation for such subjective concepts, as directed by the RIE parenting method blah blah blah. He said something about how when Daddy tells him to go back into his room to sleep, and he doesn't do it, he's bad. I said, “If you don’t go back in your room, it just means you don’t go back in your room. There is no good and bad. Why do you think you’re bad?”

“I’m trying to be good,” he said again.

Last night, I assured him again that it was Mommy’s fault he’d burned his leg, and that I was a horrible person on whom bats would momentarily descend, leaving a Good Mom in my place. He seemed to accept this. But I’m still a ways off from feeling OK.

A random collection of Gargantubaby observations:

Coming out of a nap, he murmurs, “Can I tell you a knock-knock joke, Mama?”

“Sure.”

“Knock, knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“People.”

“People who?“

“We-don’t-wear-masks people.”

He comes out of the bathroom with his pajama top tucked inside his pajama bottoms, or his T-shirt tucked into his shorts, which just kills me. IT’S SO CUTE.

He puts on the Thor-type helmet from the dress-up basket and picks up the shield and brings me his cape.

“I want to be a superhero who saves the day,” he says. But the mask keeps falling forward over his eyes. He tears it off and drops it on the ground.

“This mask doesn’t work,” he says. He throws down his shield, tears at the Velcro of the cape at his neck.

“I want to be fancy and cute,” he murmurs to himself as he goes back to the dress-up bin. “So I’ll find some cute stuff.”

He always wants to stay up reading after bedtime, and SJ doesn’t let him, but I do, because (my reasoning) I will never tell my kid he can’t read because reading is The Stuff of Life, and (SJ’s reasoning) I’m not the one who has to take care of him when he’s exhausted the next day (that’s SJ). The thing I find astounding is that this child literally will “read” just a bit longer with the door closed, then TURN OFF THE LIGHT BY HIMSELF AND GO TO SLEEP. One night I asked my stepdaughter to check above the closed door to see if the light was still on. She came back and said no, it was off, but, “I think he’s reading in the dark, because I hear pages turning.”

He’ll randomly start chanting, “Say! His! Name! George! Floyd!”

He's developed a stammer I recently learned is age-appropriate. We all deserve a gift card for takeout for patiently listening, without making any facial expression except one of complete attention and interest, as he struggles to get his thoughts out ahead of his language skills.

He has imaginary friends. Guja has been around for a few months and is a constant presence. They are a gender-fluid princess who lives in GB’s pocket and who, in his dreams, has a scarf, “wiggly eyes,” and a moustache. There’s also Bab, who hasn’t developed a description yet, and someone named Orgenic made an appearance for about a week.

Important note: I just figured out that when GB says "wiggly" (because he asks for “wiggly bread”), he means "regular." I figured this out because he was feeding his baby doll in the dark ("It's not feeding. It's milk. It's not food,” he said), and I whispered, "Ooh, are you feeding your baby doll?"

"We can use our wiggly voices," he said pointedly (in his regular voice).

He’s a pretty friendly kid, and I don’t want to force him to act a certain way around adults, but I’m also trying to teach him to be polite.

“When people say hi to you, you can say hi, too,” I say.

“But I don’t want to say hi.”

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. You don’t have to say hi. But I’m telling you that saying hi is friendly. Mommy says hi to people. I like people.”

“I like MY people.”

“Who are your people?”

“Guja and Bab.”

GB couldn’t find me in hide-and-go-seek, and I heard him say to his dad, “Maybe she died or something?”

GB: “Some persons have big boobs. Not you.”

He’s trying out a lot of new vocabulary, too:

GB: (Holding up a book) “Apparently, this is missing a page.”

Another day:

Jenny: “Are you done pooping?”

GB: “Portunately, yes.”

In one room, my stepdaughter’s Google Classroom dings as she joins a Zoom meeting. In the kitchen, I hear GB say, "Hello! Hi! Oh, I'm eating toast right now. Good-bye." I peek through the window in the wall just in time to see him pretend to hang up a phone.

I’m helping him wash his hands, and he says, "My mom is killing me!" Can't wait to go through airport security with him.

I heard GB singing in the living room, and it took me a full two minutes to register that he was saying, "Banana for sale! Banana for sale!” I went in and asked how much they were. He charged me forty-five dollars for a pretend banana. Then he sold me a "salted banana" for another forty-five dollars. 

He looks at himself in his green sweater in the mirror and says, “This looks good on me.” He says, “I’m doing what you do,” and turns from side to side, then turns around and looks at his butt.

He tries to make conversation with me by asking, “What’s your favorite dinosaur?”

I tell him he can have a chocolate croissant for breakfast. I hear him go across the hall into the office where SJ is at his computer and announce that he’s having a “chocolate with cronkis boissant” for breakfast, followed by a confused silence. Then, “Oh! Chocolate croissant!,” says SJ. We speak toddler.

As I’m leaving his room at the end of the night, GB calls out, “Love you, too! Good night! Enjoy your dream! About your life!”

I give GB a big hug and murmur, “How much do I love you?”

GB: “Twenty-five.”

Listen up: This recipe is my new go-to. I can’t believe how simple and delicious it is. Most importantly, it goes in ONE POT. You can make rice or another starch, but the second pot is on you. You need:

• 15-oz. can unsweetened coconut milk (do not shake can)

• 3 bell peppers, thinly sliced

• 1 onion, thinly sliced

• Salt and papper

• 2 TB Thai red curry paste

• 1 cup water

• 4 4-oz. salmon fillets (recipe says skinless, but HELLO WHO DOESN’T NEED OMEGA 3’S ALSO DELICIOUS)

• 1 bunch spinach (remove any thick stems)

You need to:

• Heat large pot on medium.

• Scoop 1 TB solid coconut cream into pot. Add peppers and onion and pinch each of salt and pepper.

• Cook, stirring often, until veggies begin to soften, about 5 mins.

• Stir in curry paste and cook 1 min.

• Stir in 1/2 cup coconut milk and 1 cup water and bring to a boil, then reduce heat to simmer.

• Season fillets with 1/4 tsp. each salt and pepper, then nestle among vegetables.

• Cover and poach until fish is opaque throughout, 8 to 10 mins.

• Transfer salmon to plate (I read past this and just left the salmon in the pot). Add spinach to pot and gently toss to wilt, 1 min.

• Divide vegetables among shallow bowls Top with salmon, then spoon cooking liquid over all.