Hands Make Good Lobster Claws

After the FGC Gathering, our family went to upstate New York to visit family. Returning home, our flight from Buffalo to Las Vegas was 5 hours. I sat next to Six Year Old. He was pretty much in heaven to have five hours of nearly undivided daddy time.

He had the best time playing with my hands. He pretended they were lobster claws, so I had to keep making pinching gestures. He immobilized them with imaginary rubber bands or strings. Then he decided to layer them with metal. He spent quite while putting the metal on. Then he “made it flexible” so the claws could pinch—though they weren’t supposed to pinch him. Finally, he said the metal had been on for two years, and he needed to strip it off again.

After a long time of putting metal on and off the claws, he decided to “make a hammer” to use on the metal. He pounded away at the air, like the blacksmith we saw at the DeYoung Museum a few weeks ago. He did this long enough for me to read several more pages of Shane Claiborne’s and Chris Haw’s Jesus for President.

What an imagination! Every now and then I’d look over at him, and he’d smile and stop his play for a minute, almost embarrassed to be observed. Then I’d look away and he’d go back to it. All in all, it was a fun time.

Here is a photo of the boys at my sister's place.

And here is one of me with them sitting in the statuary laps of Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass in Rochester, N.Y.