OF PETER PAN AND CAPTAIN HOOK

"mrs darling was married in white, and at first she kept the books perfectly, almost gleefully, as if it were a game, not so much a brussels sprout was missing; but by and by whole cauliflowers dropped out, and instead of them there were pictures of babies without faces. she drew them when she should have been totting up. they were mrs darling's guesses.

wendy came first, then john, then michael."

huck, with chubby fists full of peanut butter sandwich that he waves at me like he's brandishing a sword at some unseen foe, shouts "mommy! look! i captain hook!"

i smile big and repeat back in my most excited voice, "look! you're captain hook!" i have to do this or he won't feel satisfied that i've actually heard him correctly. such is the way with huck these days. he needs to have his words repeated and he chooses to self-identify with the villains. such is how i know he is mine.

he is getting so big. it's happening so fast. i miss his baby cheeks.

so, i'm writing a book. whhaaaaaat? is how i react every time i think of it. it's too weird. it's too weird for words, though 50,000 of them are due in march. in preparation, i'm re-reading a few of my favorite authors. l.m. montgomery, a bit of p.l. travers, and right now j.m. barrie. as nearly perfect as disney's peter pan is, it only takes page and a half in to know that the source material is infinitely more enchanting. (the same can be said for mary poppins.)

somehow all of my favorite books are books that are meant for children (or children's parents, if we're being honest). peter pan, anne of green gables, harry potter, huckleberry finn, and i noticed the other day that i've been naming all my babies after my favorite characters. not not on purpose, but not totally on purpose either. now that i'm aware of it, i'm starting to become weirdly passionate about it. sure their names pass the nickname test, or the supreme court justice test, but above all, let their names be shared with some incorrigible character who's been loved and has meant something to at least a hundred someone's before them. let their names give my babies something worth living up to.

we named our first baby for peter pan. he was just a little bit scruffy and always terribly naughty and i loved him hard from the moment i laid eyes on him. we brought him home to our little apartment in brooklyn and i happily set about the task of raising him up to be a right gentleman. this of course was a hopeless task, as who raises a peter pan to become a gentleman? no one with any sense is who.

we named our third baby for a grandfather on my father's side, but mostly, we named him after huck finn. oh boy is he the beat in my heart. i obviously have a soft spot for the stubborn ones.

for my huck, the hero in peter pan's story is captain hook. peering into spyglasses and plotting against mischievous lost boys and evading that dastardly tick-tocking croc. huck seems to understand the value of a good villain. we all need a good villain. and huck knows that out of all of us, the most interesting ones are the ones that are flawed, complicated, possibly the ones that are a little bit misunderstood. 

my fourth baby is going to be a book, it turns out. it's official, the ink is dried, the deadline is set. there it is! i am having a baby, and it is going to be a book. it is going to be a book about creating a beautiful life, whatever that means.

i have no idea what i am doing here, the entire thing scares the heck out of me. but it feel a little like the universe is setting this up for me. it wants this for me. i can almost hear it cheering me on. so i am going to take this opportunity and i am just going to run with it, both eyes shut, head first and to hell with it.

but my fifth baby will be human. if it kills me, dang it!

i have just the perfect name in mind.

i read this passage in "peter pan" the other day when i was on a train to dc. it gave me goose bumps all the way down my arms.

"stars are beautiful, but they may not take an active part in anything, they must just look on for ever. it is a punishment put on them for something they did so long ago that no star now knows what it was. so the old ones have become glassy-eyed and seldom speak (winking is the star language), but the little ones still wonder. they are not really friendly to peter, who has a mischievous way of stealing up behind them and trying to blow them out; but they are so fond of fun that they were on his side tonight, and anxious to get the grown-ups out of the way. so as soon as the door of 27 closed on mr and mrs darling there was a commotion in the firmament, and the smallest of all the stars in the milky way screamed out:

'now, peter!'"