Still On The Mend

Just as I predicted, it's been a long week of recovery, with lots of time indoors together. We've done every last puzzle, read the same books a dozen times over, and watched all our favorite DVDs an embarrassing number of times.

(Quick aside: Have you ever had to answer this question every week: "But why did Anakin turn into Darth Vader?"* It's an answer as loaded and complex as Truman Capote, one filled with subtle shades of giving in to the dark side, embracing his anger and hatred instead of following the nobility and honor of the Jedi order, and not finish his vegetables at dinner, by the way, depending on the mood I'm in when asked.)

To make matters worse, the sun came out yesterday in a full springtime blaze, beckoning us to walk to the park. Within minutes of Finn scaling the jungle gym I knew we weren't quite ready, as his still sickly lungs caused his little body to convulse in coughing-fit spasms. We quickly retreated, defeated, back to the loft, where we settled back into Day 6 of Getting Better.

Needless to say, I'm looking forward to the weekend.

* Finn asks this question repeatedly because, 1) he's three, and the three-year-old rule book clearly states that all questions directed to your mother must be posed a number of times equal to the number of minutes she was in labor with you, and 2) although we've allowed him to see, with a parental chaperone with him on the couch at all times, the original Star Wars (Part IV) in its totality and parts of V, VI, I, and even II (he tells us to forward past the scary parts, like when Darth Maul fights with his double-sided light saber or when Hayden Christiansen, bless his pouty lips, tries to act too much), we've deemed part III to be much too violent and graphic and will probably hold off on letting him view it until he's about 26.

What this means, unfortunately, is that his narrative cycle is completely fractured because he's never seen for himself how/why Anakin becomes Darth Vader. We keep hoping our descriptions of the metamorphosis from dark to light, from good to evil, will suffice, but his curiosity keeps this subject close enough that we discuss it constantly. He also wants to know if Darth Vader gets sick, which makes me giggle because I imagine Mommy Vader leaning over her boy, feeling his masked forehead for a fever, then trying to somehow fit the dropper full of bubblegum-flavored antibiotics through his sleek mask into his pie hole.