Part 2

I know, it’s been nearly as agonizing a wait as the week preceding the final Sopranos episode. Foremost on your mind has been the question: “Did Dash go to Coney Island?”

He did.

But there was no watershed moment, no first act finale in which Dash, center stage, belts out,  “I did it, I went to Coney Island and nothin’ ll stop me now!” backed by a chorus of six-year-olds leaping and jazz-handing through a quaintly graffiti-ed subway car. 

Nope.

You’d think, by not—if not from my own experience than from seven years of Dash—I’d remember movement in life is rarely linear.

It may be that I still expect life to imitate art, or more specifically  “Once upon a time” stories, but more likely that I speak to all the wrong parents: the moms who talk about how toilet training was like “flicking a light switch,” or the dads who mention how once their kid picked up a book to read, he hasn’t put it down yet.  If this is really happening out there, we not a party to this forward motion. Rather our little family’s way of moving through change or “development” is more likely to resemble the moves in the Macarena (arm, arm, hip, hip, shimmy, shimmy, turn to the side!) Here’s one example:  After slowly and painstakingly relinquishing Dash of his crib, then diapers, we got Soviet and made an ultimatum at four for getting rid of his bopper (aka pacifier) His response: Are you going to take everything away from me?

As if to prove that one small Coney-Island-step was by no means a leap for anyone, let alone mankind, he had a major freak-out on the L-platform at the Bedford stop the day after the beach trip and an operatic recital (many arias) MILES away from a subway station soon after.

I know that we will get through this. I know that to maintain some level of sanity and maturity we must believe that a plan is a good thing; a plan helps you move forward, and we will proceed with that idiot scheme as our guide. But we all know what’s really going on. What’s really happening is all the parts of Dash are gathering, in no linear or sensible way, and all those thoughts and feelings, smells and sounds work on and with him to combat this thing, and all we can do is add something into the mix of stew and stir.