The Dynamic Duo

When I introduce my son, Jim, to people I usually say, “This is my baby.” Jim is used to this by now, and smiles good naturedly. It usually makes the person I am introducing him to smile too, because ruggedly handsome, 6’3” Jim looks nothing like a baby. But he is my youngest child, born 22 years ago today, and is cursed (or blessed) to go through life this way.
Before Jim was born, the family consisted of two boys (Bob and Johnny) and one girl (Heather), so it was only logical, a foregone conclusion really, that this next child would be a girl, evening up the sexes at two and two. Grandma Wesley even bought a little dress pre-birth, and girl names were mulled over. Grandpa McDonald always claimed he knew it would be a boy. Whether he really knew this or only claimed it to be obstinate, I don’t know, but he dubbed the new grandchild-to-be “Angus Og”. As you have probably figured out, the child was Jim. I was told later that when the doctor announced “It’s a boy!”, I asked druggily, “It’s a WHAT?” But we did have a boy’s name ready in case the unforeseen happened, and so dubbed him James Patrick McDonald.
About 3 seconds after I held him, I forgot I had ever wanted another girl. He had me at “WAAA”. Jim was the only kid we ever had an ultrasound picture made of; the doctor wanted it done because he didn’t see how, given the the size of my abdomen, he could possibly be due when I said he should be due. It turns out he was just a long, skinny baby. Still is.
Johnny, just a few days short of three years old, was fasacinated with his little brother. I had to monitor his probing of the “little fingers, ears, nose, eyes.”
I remember Jim being kind of a fussy baby. He really liked being held, and got lots of it. I would try so carefully to lay him down once asleep, but he would almost always wake up and start crying, holding out his arms to be cradled once again. For awhile when he was about 3-4, he refused to sleep alone, so I would often climb up into the top bunk bed with him until he drifted off to sleep. I can’t remember why Johnny didn’t sleep in the top bunk! If I was too busy for that, Heather would take him into her bed, but would call me in a panic when her sleeping brother twined his arms about her neck in a strangle hold making it difficult for her to breathe.
Once Jimmy (as we called him) reached Kindergarten, he decided that he wished to be called by his real name. His teacher and friends knew him as “James.” For awhile in first grade, he thought he would switch to his middle name for a while, and it nearly drove his poor teacher to distraction when much of the rest of the class followed suite. I remember a school project called “Invent America”, and Kindergarten aged Jim invented a “Sleeping Box”. His Dad helped him make a prototype, and the result was a heavy wooden box lined with velvet, with a half circle hole cut out of one side to accomodate the sleeper’s neck. The premise was that often there was too much light and noise to make it possible to fall asleep. The sleeping box would help. I think they drilled a few air holes, but the box was still stifling and airless. Jimmy tried it out one night, and nearly had heat stroke before he would admit that the box had a few flaws.
Jim had a very special relationship with his Grandpa McDonald, who continued to call him “Angus” once in a while, even after birth. For one special birthday, little Jimmy made his Grandpa a surf board. It started as an ordinary plank of wood, but after it was embellished with some fashionable crayon designs and accompanied by an original poem, it because a one-of-a-kind surf board. The poem read something like this:” When you’re feeling kind of blue, And you don’t know what to do, All you gotta do is get on a board, and surf down a hump of snow.” verse 2: “When you’re feeling kind of green, and you don’t know what to to bean, All you gotta do is get on a board and surf down a hump of grass.” I don’t know is Grandpa ever used the board for its intended purpose, but he sure liked the poem.
Another time, Jimmy gave his Grandpa a little plastic pig, and Grandpa, ever the prankster, presented Jim with tiny little pieces of bacon a few days later. Jimmy gazed in wonder at the bounty his pig had produced. “But, Grandpa, it was a plastic pig!”
Another time, Jimmy gave Jesse Strope, our elderly neighbor, a cardboard fishing pole he had made, complete with a little envelope of smiling paper worms. Jesse showed the boy some whopper trout he caught with that pole. It’s a wonder that poor kid didn’t have some severe emotional issues. But Jesse did give Jim a real fishing pole and a few years later, Jesse’s own personalized pool cue. When big brother Johnny was in school, Jimmy could not wait til he got home. I would play cassettes , and the boys would dance around the house to “Donkey Kong” or “FraggleRock”. For awhile, little Jimmy’s favorite toys were his stuffed animals. He especially liked Care Bears, Popples (they could roll up into a ball!) and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, especially Michelangelo. He had a little green stuffed bear that he named “Lively Snuggler.” Isn’t that a great name? UDad would sometimes get the two “J” names mixed up, and would often call them “John,Jim,Fred Ralph”. When Jim got to name one of the outdoor kittens, he named it FredRalph, and said he was naming it after himself. FredRalph was a Siamesey looking cat, very friendly and long-lived.
When he was little, Jim was a bit of a dandy and really liked to get dressed up. He was the only kid in Kindergarten who refused to put his hand into the halloween pumpkin to help pull out the stringy seeds, and when Dad drew charcoal mustaches and beards on halloween faces, Jim always refused to get his face dirty. One time, at a 4-H Baked Food Sale I was supervising, little Jimmy was stung on the arm by a bee. Yes, I said “on the arm”, but somehow he could not walk for the rest of the day, and I had to carry him around while helping sell bread and cookies. I am happy to report that Jim has almost entirely outgrown this fastidiousness.
Grandma Wesley was also a youngest child, and she always had a soft spot for kids in that birth position. She would get Jimmy to walk to the town of Howe with her (7 miles) with the lure of a milkshake at the cafe at the end. But as Jim remembers, the rest of the family would usually show up in the car to pick them up, and they would all get milkshakes too! But that didn’t stop him from going on the next Grandma walk.
It seemed that while my kids had the normal sibling squabbles, Jim usually managed to stay out of most of them. When I asked him his secret for getting along so well he said, “I just do whatever they tell me to do.” He’s totally outgrown that one too! He also rebelled once in a while when he was younger. One time Bob tried to tell him he had his shoes on the wrong feet. “Bob,” he said defiantly, “You are NOT the boss of my feet.”
Jim has always been a good student, and was usually well-liked and well-behaved. The only times he got in trouble for fighting in school, he was sticking up for one of his friends. When Jim was in Junior High, it became apparent that he had a real talent for basketball. His number in 7th and 8th grade was “43”, and he liked to point out (often loudly) that his basketball number was the same as my age! We loved going to his games all through high school; not watching Jim play basketball is one thing that I still really miss.
Now Jim is an upperclassman at University of Idaho, majoring in Wildlife Biology and spends his summers fighting fires for the BLM. He has developed a passion for hunting and fishing, an interest shared by his Dad and several uncles. He is handsome, witty, funny, and compassionate, and I love him to pieces.
Happy Birthday, Baby. Wish I could be with you today. I’m so glad you are exactly who you are.

UltraMom

UltraMom & her forever baby

Jim and my new baby, Murphy

Jim asleep on Thanksgiving Day cradling his football