Christina ~ May 26

 

His mother is in Boston for the weekend, minding the store, as she has been doing these last few months, his father stays behind in Millers Falls to take care of three year old Costa. I’m at their house to keep his father – my son – company, as I often do. I put Costa down for a nap in his bedroom upstairs, the room cluttered with toys and books, Costa still sleeping on a mattress on the floor rather than the real bed I gave them when I moved my New York City furniture to Massachusetts back in February. I read Costa Blueberries for Sal and he corrects me when I read a word that differs from how his mother reads it, apparently she takes liberties with what the writer wrote and exchanges words here and there. I explain to Costa that I can only read what is written since I don’t know how his mother reads it. He’s ok with that, but he continues to correct me whenever I read something that doesn’t match his mother’s version. I hadn’t read the book in decades and had pretty much forgotten it but now I’m reading it I understand why Costa was so insistent earlier in the day on wanting to pick the little green blueberries on one of the bushes in their yard, why he wanted to find a metal pail with a handle that he thought was somewhere in the house. That’s what little Sal carries, a little metal pail, and that’s what Sal’s mother carries too, a larger metal pail. Later Costa and I walk down the dirt road from his house and I see a large metal bucket hanging by a rope on a tree branch and I ask, Is that the bucket you were looking for? He says, Yes, but it’s a pail, not a bucket. With Costa, words matter, a pail is a pail, not a bucket.