Potatoes!

Eric and I have begun to play a game that my father used to play with me when I was young. I remember it as "Potatoes."

Back then, dad would sling me over one shoulder and parade me around the house pretending I was a sack of potatoes. I would struggle and half-protest but he'd calmly persist, oblivious to my cries since, after all, I was only a sack of potatoes. The game would climax when we'd enter the kitchen and he'd ask mom if she wanted to buy some potatoes. Of course, by then I was usually a giggling, squirming mess eager to be released so I'd frantically implore: "Buy me! Buy me, mommy!" Mom would sometimes play it out by haggling over the price or pretending she had a lot of vegetables already and I remember the exquisite delight of being the unheeded center of this impromptu domestic drama: Dad, the friendly potato merchant, me, an unwilling sack of potatoes and mom, the hero who would save me from my potato fate. It's one of the two or three happiest memories of my life.

The other night Wifer and I had both come home late and she had some work to do so it was left to me to put the guy to sleep. We played baseball, brushed teeth and settled down to read a book. It was obvious after reading, however, that he was not fully wound down and perhaps anxious about the lack of attention from mommy. We were wrestling and I parried one of his lunging double kicks with the heavy comforter when inspiration struck! I quickly wrapped him up to the neck with his arms pinned at his side like a burrito and asked him: "Do you want to play potatoes?" His eyes gleamed with mischief and he gladly assented, more persuaded by my enthusiasm, I think, than any clear comprehension  of the type of game I had in mind.

I scooped him up in my arms and began carrying him through the apartment. "Po-TA-toes! Po-TA-toes for sale! Does anybody want to buy a sack of potatoes?" He lay happily prone, swaddled like an infant, grinning widely at our pretend conspiracy.  We tripped dutifully through the kitchen looking for customers but to no avail.  "Who wants po-TA-toes?" We entered the study and, unlike his father, Eric stayed discreetly in character even as the transaction escalated.

"Wanna buy some potatoes?"

"Potatoes? I love potatoes."

"Feel them. They're very fresh. Only ten dollars."

I had hoped Mommy would haggle the price with me but she was slightly distracted from writing an email and asked us to come back in a little bit. Disappointed, I withdrew my wares and resumed parading Eric around the house. "Po-TA-toes!  Who wants Po-TA-toes?"

When I looked down at the bundle in my arms, he was smiling but deeply entranced in the role-play. He kept his body limp and his arms within the folds of the by-now dishevelled comforter. Though to my knowledge he had never actually seen a sack of potatoes before, somehow he instinctively knew to stay inside our makeshift one. Nor was he discouraged or alarmed when I hovered him above the garbage bin and threatened to throw him away because "No one wants to buy potatoes." My attempts to amp up the drama, to elicit the same fear, impatience and delight I remember were met with a kind of placid acceptance: as if he had been playing Potatoes all his life.  As if it were strong in his DNA. 

This sounds like a classic case of the father trying too hard to recreate a childhood memory PRECISELY as he remembers it, to the detriment of the child's own genuine experience. But, luckily, I'm too smart for that. There was nothing besides his eyes he needed to tell me who was dictating the terms of this exercise. After depositing Mommy's delivery on the bed, he immediately wanted to play again--so we did. 

Now, I find myself wondering if he will ever think back on these sessions thirty-some-odd years later with anything like the same degree of fondness and nostalgia. I'm sure it doesn't matter. The gifts we offer to our children are nothing compared to the gifts we give them. Even when those gifts are of their choosing.