Overriding hunger

I swear I’m going to scream the next time someone says to me, “If he’s hungry, he’ll eat. Don’t nag him about food.”

True, infants who are well-cared-for learn that when they have an unpleasant sensation, someone comes and gives them a bottle, and then they feel better. Eventually they realize this as hunger and eating.

But when you’ve spend the first 13 months of your life in an orphanage which doesn’t have enough time or money to keep you well-fed, you learn something different. You learn that there’s an upleasant sensation that grows and grows and scares you. Your body’s blood sugar drops and tells your brain you’re going to die. You panic. Eating never enters your mind.

If you’re Vlad, you rage. If you’re not, you could wither away and die. Literally.

So yes, it’s been years that Vlad’s been home with more than enough food and plenty of encouragement to eat it. It’s also true that fattening up happens to be a house speciality. However, I’m sad to say that the cycle of his not eating and getting over-hungry is all too familiar around here.

I liken it to simultaneously watching The Exorcist and The Omen, Part IV, the Devil’s Revenge.

A while back, Vlad came home around 6pm from a playdate. His friend’s mom dropped him off saying, “He said he wasn’t hungry.” No food since school lunch at noon. Archie and I exchanged a knowing look. Troubled waters ahead.

I quickly set about getting food ready. “We have leftovers from last night, Vlad,” I said, doing my best June Cleaver imitation, “or else you can have a grilled cheese sandwich.”

“I don’t want anything,” Vlad growled just like Linda Blair did whenever her inhabiting Devil spoke. I swear I saw sparks come out of his eyes.

“I’ll get you some leftovers,” I said, trying to appear lighthearted, thinking I could avoid the maelstrom I knew was waiting for me just minutes in the future. “I can tell you’re hungry and it’s been a while since you ate. Think about it, are you hungry?”

“I’m not hungry, why do you always think I’m hungry? I just want to …” Vlad blustered into a diatribe about wanting to play video games and sit in his room carving 666 into his wooden bureau. (Okay, I made that one up.)

Vlad slapped the counter and violently rocked his chair to and fro. I set about zapping a bowl of food for him thinking, Don’t react, Don’t react. I turned to him and swear I saw his head turn 360 degrees on his neck, but Archie says I’m exaggerating.

“Here you go,” I said, putting a plate of food in front of him, “just take a few bites, you’ll feel better.” Vlad banged his fists on the counter and threw his silverware on the floor.

“I told you…” he shouted. Just then Archie rounded the corner into the kitchen.

“Your turn,” I said to him, “I’m going outside for a few minutes.” We’ve learned to tag team in times like this, spelling each other after intervals of ten minutes max. I walked onto the deck and sat down on the steps, breathing deeply as I listened to Vlad’s escalating voice punctuated by Archie’s calm reply.

A scene from The Exorcist flashed through my mind: the Devil is going wild in the apartment and Linda’s parents wrangle her to the floor. Holding her there, they see a message scrawled on her chest. “Help me” the message says, but it’s written inside out, as if by a person stuck on the other side of the skin. I thought of Vlad as that little person, stuck on the other side of an uncontrollable panic.

Good, I thought to myself, feeling empathy for him. Must be ready to go back in for the next round.

“You’re it,” Archie said, scurrying out of the room. I sat across the counter from Vlad and looked down at my feet, determined not to react to anything he did.

Vlad hissed at me (no forked tongue, I’m happy to report). I didn’t respond.

He grunted. No response.

A few minutes of silence passed. I carefully examined the contours of my right instep.

Finally Vlad, back in his flesh, said, “I’m sorry, Mom, I guess I was hungry.”

Good thing I didn’t pierce your chest with a silver stake, then, eh?

I looked up at him. “Vlad, next time you’re hungry, could you just EAT instead of flail around like that?”

“I’ll try.”

So please, don’t be telling me he’ll eat when he’s hungry. Because I might be tempted to use that silver stake for other purposes.

Stay at home or go to the office?

“Women either love to stay at home with their kids or they have to hoof it back to work as soon as they can,” my friend Dan said when we were having dinner the other day with our mutual friend, Roz. “In my observation, there’s no in between.”

“Amen to that,” Roz said, “when my sons were little, I almost lost my mind at home with them. Don’t get me wrong, I love them to pieces, but I had to get out of there.”

My thoughts turned to Vladdie’s first year at home. I’d quit my job to be with him when he came home from Russia at age 13 months. I fully intended to put my sensible pumps in the closet forever in exchange for the flipflops of the stay-at-home mom.

About six months into it, though, I realized that the homelife I’d imagined was not quite panning out. Or, to capture the spirit of the moment, thoughts of commitment to a quiet sanatorium in the mountains of Switzerland were my constant companion.

I was bored out of my mind. I felt lonely and isolated. I wanted someone to talk to who would answer in full and compelling sentences. If I had to sing about the damn wheels on the bus one more time, fizzle and sputter were going to eek out my ears.

It was like that until I returned to work part-time, a full year at home as my badge of accomplishment.

I was relieved to be back in the working world of adults but felt I’d failed at motherhood. My dream of swaying on a swing of garland, long blonde tresses flowing in the breeze, with a happy, giggling baby in my lap lay abandoned on the floor of my cubical.

I felt guilty about giving my two-year-old over to a nanny for 24-hours a week so that I could make sassy comebacks in meetings and boss people who would actually do what I told them to do around.

I know my expectations of motherhood were beyond the pale. And I know I should have made better arrangements to take care of myself in those first few months.

But I didn’t know any of that then. I only knew that being at home was driving me to the looney bin. Women I tried to talk to were a little afraid to discuss it with me. Perhaps it was the green fizz in my ears or the look of sheer panic in my eyes.

I’m leaving aside the whole discussion of what men feel compelled to do and why we don’t rip them a new one for not staying at home with the little ones. Neither am I ready to talk about families who don’t have the economic ability to revel in this decision.

Every mom who works outside the home that I’ve spoken with says that once they went back to work, they were much better moms at home. I’ll take it one step further: I think Vlad and I are both still alive because I went back to work.

But I wonder: was Dan right? Am I biologically or psychologically or intellectually or dispositionally pre-destined to be in an office? Is one either able or unable to be a stay-at-home mom? Talk amongst yourselves below please.

Advice for my new middle schooler

Just don’t stop. Don’t stop being excited and curious and silly. Don’t stop asking about things, questioning things, trying to understand everything. Don’t stop being the “human exclamation point” you’ve always been.

You are a dynamo, a whirlwind, a force with which to be reckoned. And even though that drives me crazy sometimes, it’s that vitality which pushes you and makes me so proud of you.

The twinkle in your eye, the smile that flickers around the edges of your mouth, and the sweetness you exude thrill me and thrill others who are around you.

It’s true that many of your schoolmates don’t see it. They’re looking for coolness and sophistication and an aloofness that you just don’t have. They probably don’t either, so you know. They’re pretending. Trying to fit in. You’re not. And you shouldn’t. Trying to be something you’re not only pushes what you are into hiding.

So own it. Own your silliness. Own your goofiness. Own your outlandish ideas and your loudness. Rather than encourage you to color outside the lines, I encourage you to move the lines to where you want them to be. Make them your lines. Live in those lines no matter what anyone else says to you.

Own the stuff you’re not all that happy about, too. Yes, you have a hearing loss. Yes, you wear hearing aids. Yes, you were adopted. Those things are true. But if you don’t own them, they will own you and come to define you both to yourself and to others. They are parts of you, but they are not you.

You are an amazing, bright spark of life. You are funny and creative and deep and inquisitive. You are loving and kind and thoughtful. These are true of you, too. Don’t lose them. Don’t stop being them because of what others might think of you.

Don’t stop because of your fears—be mindful of them, think them through and take the caution they advise, but don’t be stopped by them.

Please don’t stop being my baby boy. I know a time is coming when you’ll need to push me away so you can explore your lines more. While I’m not quite ready for that, I’ll try to respect it when the time comes. As long as you swear to cherish that squishy core and come back to me, I can do it.

Don’t stop letting me in. Don’t stop telling me your fears and worries.

Don’t stop listening to hip hop with me because I really don’t like it, I just like listening to it with you. I like watching you sing to it. I like seeing you love me for sharing it with you.

Don’t stop opening yourself to others. Yes, sometimes it will break your heart. Sometimes it will make you cry. But sharing yourself with others and connecting with them is one of the greatest feelings in the world. I know because that’s what I have with you.

So please don’t stop.

Reporting: the end of school

Can I just say that I hate the end of school?

Vlad has so much to do to end his 5th grade year and guess who has to make sure it all happens? One major project was a detailed, 20-page report on a state of his choice. For some ungodly reason he chose North Carolina. Now, no offense to the people of the great Tar Heel State, but WHO CARES? It’s not like much happened there, and I should know now that I’ve practically written a 20-page report on the place.

Here’s how the drama unfolded: Vlad’s teacher told us parents about the report a couple of weeks before it was due. I’m sure she’d assumed that the kids had already discussed the project with their parents, but Vlad can barely remember to get his jacket home everyday let alone that he has a major school project to work on.

The week before the report was due, I’d come home from work, sit Vlad and his laptop down next to me, and encourage him to write for an hour. I sat next to him to be sure he doesn’t wander off online and set up dates with Available Women In Your Area. [Yes, we have parental controls on his laptop, but they're not very effective. More on that debacle another time.] I’d read my New Yorker magazine, glancing over every now and then to keep Vlad on task.

The real fun began the weekend before the project was due.

“Let’s work on your paper together, Vlad,” I said. I had this crazy notion that since I love to write we could share some fun activity time together. I envisioned us sitting together, me laughingly handing him edited pages, him laughingly taking them and discussing the narrative construct and creating an arc to his storyline. Okay already, I said it was crazy.

I’ll spare you the Sturm and Drang that ensued; suffice it to say doors were slammed, shoes were flung, and swear words were attempted. And that was just about the type size.

We went from him reading a passage in his text and discussing it with me before writing his version of events, to me reading to him suggesting story lines, to me eventually dictating as in “Type ‘In the beginning, comma’.”

It was murderous.

The kicker, though, came when the paper was due–a Wednesday. Here’s the arc of that story:

Tuesday morning, “Don’t forget you have to hand your paper in tomorrow, Vlad. Better finish your conclusion.”

Tuesday after school, “How’s the table of contents coming, Vlad? You know you have to hand the paper in tomrorow.”

Tuesday evening, “Let’s do one more bit, Vlad, so that you can finish.”

Tuesday night, nearing on midnight, “Just give me the laptop and go to bed.”

Wednesday morning: “Yay, you’re finished! Don’t forget to hand in the paper today.”

You know he forgot to hand the paper in, don’t you?

He forgot on Thursday as well.

Friday, Archie walked in to the classroom with him and watched him put the paper in the homework tray.

I asked Vlad what he learned from doing this report. “I learned how to write a report from a book and about North Carolina.” Good enough. Me? I learned that if I ever choose to repeat the 5th grade, I’m sure I could ace the work.

Cry baby

“I can’t stand it!” Vlad said, screwing his eyes shut and clamping his hands over his ears. A baby had started to cry in the restaurant we were in. “Why doesn’t he shut up?”

Past experience has shown that if the baby didn’t stop, Vlad’s annoyance would turn to anger and rage soon thereafter. Over the years, I’ve concocted various reasons for Vlad’s vehemence. Perhaps, I reasoned, the crying exacerbated the noise distortion caused by his hearing aids, but turning them off never helped. Maybe he remembered other babies in the orphanage crying. Or maybe he just wasn’t a kid person. Can kids not be kid people?

Until a few weeks ago, here’s how the scene would have unfolded:

“He’s upset, Vlad,” I’d say, with an edge to my voice, “he just needs help. Can’t you feel sorry for him?” I’d be impatient, even angry, at Vlad and almost demand that he be compassionate.

I’m sure you can imagine how successful that strategy has been.

Now I have the benefit of my slowing down parenting classes to draw from. I’ve learned to wait, focus myself, and try to assess what Vlad is feeling before reacting…sometimes. “Behavior is communication,” my instructor said.

In assessing this situation, a passage I read in one of the texts for the class, “Parenting from the Inside” came to mind. The author describes panic he felt when hearing a baby cry. He wondered if his panic was caused by early, pre-verbal memories of his own unmet needs. Bells went off as I thought about Vlad’s early life experience.

Remember, we adopted Vlad from Russia when he was 13 months old. A Russian orphanage is emphatically not the place to get immediate or loving attention. The caregivers, while for the most part kind and trying to do their best, had twenty or so babies to tend to. They were, of necessity, rushed and abrupt. Makes perfect sense that when Vlad cried, he’d have to wait for help. A crying baby could easily stir sensations Vlad would have stored in his subconscious.

I decided to try this theory out on Vladdie.

“Maybe hearing babies cry makes you sad; maybe it makes you remember how you felt as a baby,” I said on the way to school a few days back.

“No,” Vlad said without a moment’s hesitation from the back seat, “it makes me really mad. That baby has a mother and a father to take care of him and I didn’t when I was a baby.”

What? I thought. How could you know that without thirty years of therapy? Here I was, so proud of my smartypants theory, and there he was with information at the ready.

While I suspect that the anger has a flip side that is related to sadness and feelings of helplessness, his access to what lay behind his reaction amazed me. And even more amazing is that all I had to do was ask him. Go figure.

I have to admit that it also makes me sad to see the effect of Vlad’s time in the orphanage. I should know that by now since I’ve explained post-institutionalized children to others a zillion times. “No one spends significant development time in an institution and is unaffected by it,” I’ve said.

But with it staring me in the face, or, since we were driving, staring at the back of my head, I’m taken aback.

I said, “Yeah, Vlad, it sucks. I’m sorry we weren’t together from the start. But I’m really glad we are now.”

“Me, too, Mom,” Vlad said.

I twisted my arm around to fit it between the front bucket seats and put my hand out. Vlad held it in both of his. Neither of us said anything else for the rest of the ride.

April Fool

Before I get into the fabulous things I’ve been learning about parenting, I need your advice on something. Please read through and vote on the two polls I’ve included below.

Last week, I perused my Facebook Friends’ April Fool’s jokes: one Friend was surfing with the sharks, another ate so many jellybeans her teeth fell out, etc. And then I came across this:

[My six-year-old son] said to me: Mom, I’m adopted—April Fools!

There were several comments along the lines of “Hysterical!” “What a riot!” and the like.

I stopped, hand suspended on the mouse, looking at the post. How, I wondered, would Vlad feel if he read this post? How many times does he encounter “jokes” involving adoption?

I know I encounter them. Just the other day at work, for instance, a co-worker was being chided about her project. Someone said the work she was doing was not important to the company and she said, “Yes, it’s true, I’m adopted.” Since it was my very first day on the job, I decided not to come off all Righteous Rita and call her on the comment. But I have to admit it bugged me.

I know the Facebook “joke” really was wasn’t about adoption. It was about my Friend’s son thinking he could make his mom forget she’d given birth. But what does it say about her son’s perception of adoption? Probably nothing, but maybe….

And while I don’t see this Friend frequently, I know she is a kind person who would never say anything negative about adoption. She knows we adopted Vlad and has always been welcoming and warm to all of us. She likely didn’t realize that her comment might not be so funny to an adoptee or an adopter. Probably not so funny to birthparents either.

My first question: am I a freak for being sensitive about this? It’s not like I’m mortified or have un-friended my Friend or anything crazy. It’s just that her words stopped me. Made me feel a bad—mostly for Vladdie, who will encounter weird attitudes about adoption throughout his life.

My second question: should I have said something either to my Friend individually or to everyone who commented on her post? I thought of saying something like, “That makes me sad”—she’d immediately know what I meant but it would probably make her feel bad, which I really don’t want to do. Or I could say something like, “Adoptees and their parents probably wouldn’t find this very funny.” Ouch. Dour Donna does Facebook.

Do I have to be the Official Spokesperson For Adoption Issues all the time? Talk amongst yourselves below.

Somebody help me, I’m gonna blog again!

Accolades to Steve Martin for the very veiled reference to his fine line of comedy, “Somebody help him! He’s speaking French.” As a former college French major, intent on making my “r”s trill from deep within, I appreciate the sentiment.

Yes, my dears, it’s your friend Honest Mom back again from a long hiatus.

I needed a break so visited with Mary the Tech Worker in Coney Island, selling Nathan’s hotdogs, getting sand between my toes, and you know, stuff like that.

But one of my fabulous readers, Sista Monica P, recommended a series of parenting classes that I’ve been attending of late and guess what? I’ve been doing it all wrong! Poor Vladdie.

Not 100% wrong, of course, else Vlad or me or Archie himself would no longer be in the picture. The class is based on the simple principle of slowing down and, get this, listening to your kid. I know, crazy or what? So I’ve been listening to the little cherub and it turns out there’s a lot of interesting stuff in that kid’s head.

Since I’m a writer at heart, I need to put it all down in bits and bytes and share it with you, my readership. And that means: I’m baaaack and I’m bloooogging.

So pull up a laptop and settle in with the Honest Mom family as we slog it out until we get it right. Who knows? Maybe a beautiful princess will pop out of my head and surprise us all (another Mary the Tech Worker-ism I’ve come to love).

Shattered illusions

“I know Papa’s the tooth fairy,” Vlad said as we walked away from the tennis courts after his lesson last week.

An image of Archie in a green tutu with a wand spreading pixie dust flittered through my mind.

“Last time I lost a tooth, I felt his hand under my pillow.”

I remembered the last time: I’d had a rough day and headed to the family room to zone out to some mindless tv. I’d given Archie a dollar bill so that he could slip it under Vlad’s pillow in exchange for the tooth. I thought the instruction “wait till he’s asleep” was implied and understood. However, Archie, lost in his own world, charged into Vlad’s room right then and there. I overheard Vlad’s sleepy voice saying, “Papa, is that you?” as I switched on the tube.

“How do you know it was his hand and not the fairy’s?” I asked, trying to buy time so that I could formulate a real answer.

“It was big and hairy and I know what Papa’s hand feels like.”

Truth is I never wanted to perpetuate the Tooth Fairy myth. Back in the salad days of my mothering, I thought I’d adhere to a strict policy of truth and forbearance. We’d be an egalitarian family that lived from the heart—we’d speak only the truth, debate the lies, sit on hard wooden benches and eat a diet of rice and steamed vegetables. Little did I realize how much of parenting is done on the fly, without any time for preparation or forethought.

That’s how I got sucked into the Tooth Fairy. Plus it seemed like a cute idea at the time. I’m surprised it’s lasted this long.

“Come on, Mom, you always tell me the truth.”

That hit home, as I’m sure was Vlad’s intention. I’ve been on him about his lying, coming close to using the standby retort: you lie like a rug. As in: “Why don’t you believe me that I washed my hair/changed my underwear/brushed my teeth?” Not wanting to point to the obvious and odorous answer, I say: “Because you do have a tendency to lie, Vlad.” I follow this closely with a lesson on integrity, honesty, and bravery. I’m throwing bravery in a lot lately, just for grins.

“Is Papa the tooth fairy?” Vlad persisted.

“No,” I blurted out. It’s true. He’s not. I’m the one who makes sure the tooth gets sealed in an envelope with a polite request printed on the outside. I’m the one who reminds Vlad to place it under his pillow and hurry off to sleep. And with one notable exception, I’m the one who tiptoes into Vlad’s room late at night to make the exchange. I admit I didn’t want Archie getting all the credit.

Vlad stopped walking and turned to look at me. He had a smirk on his face as if to say, “So this is how we’re playing it?” I panicked as I saw my credibility slipping though my fingers.

“I am,” I said.

Vlad smiled. “I knew it!” He hesitated a few minutes before saying, “Does this mean I don’t get money for my teeth anymore?”

The bittersweet dance between childhood and maturity has begun.

Hallow’d vestments

“I want to be a Decayed Dude this year,” Vlad said, applying himself to the Costume Express catalog with the same degree of intensity I give to the Daedalus book listings.

It’s an annual holiday tradition in our family—arguing the precise degree of explicit or implied violence and/or gore in Vlad’s Halloween attire.

Back in the day when we had complete control over Vlad’s duds, Archie made some wicked cool costumes. There was the rocket cut from silver poster board complete with a Tin Man replica hat when Vlad was five. He had a little trouble walking as the rocket was almost floor length, but no matter. Two years later, there was Thomas the Tank Engine, also fabricated from poster board this time coated in powder blue. Vlad had to enter rooms sideways, due to the engine’s girth, but he loved that it was personalized with his own name next to Thomas’.

In third grade, however, our parental control switched completely off. I’d “encouraged” Vlad to be a Pokemon trainer—the pixie-like outfit was so cute…. His cooler-than-cool classmates laughed at him when he told them what he was going to be so he refused to wear the costume. He went as a Kung Fu master instead—a last minute wardrobe substitution fashioned from materials found lying around the house.

Last year Vlad won out in the end and chose to be the Grim Reaper. At a team building dinner I attended with my colleagues just before Halloween, the talk turned to costumes.

“My daughter’s going to be a cheerleader,” Cindy announced with a giggle. “I’m going to dress up just like her and take her around to the neighbors.” Yes, people like this do exist and they walk the planet just like you and I do.

“My girls are going to be princesses,” my boss said. “They’re so cute!”

I thought better of blurting out that my son was going as Death.

Vlad began building his case for the Decayed Dude.

“It has a realistic bleeding-action chest that oozes blood when you touch it,” he said. Descriptions like that kinda make me want to be a catalog copywriter. Although I do question leading young minds to wonder what a bleeding chest would look like in real life.

“Isn’t it time to add a little irony to the costume selection?” I asked. Nine-year-olds, I learned last year, acquired a sense of sarcasm—a long awaited and heartily celebrated arrival in our house. I’ve been waiting on irony ever since.

“What’s ‘irony’?” Vlad asked.

If you have to ask….

“Humm,” I said, “it’s hard to explain. I think of it as a facetious juxtaposition.” Vlad’s mouth hung open slightly as he looked at me over the top of the catalog. “Archie, can you explain it better than that?”

“Wow,” Archie said, “that’s tough. It’s something that you find ironic, I guess.”

Clearly Archie and I need to be consulting a dictionary more often.

“What about the headless horseman?” I asked. “You ride horses so that would be funny.”

“Or how about a headless tennis player?” Archie riffied on my suggestion. He and I snorted in unison. Vlad rolled his eyes.

“No, I want the Decayed Dude,” Vlad said, “it’s cool.”

The bell sounded. End of round one. The contenders retreated to their corners.

No fancy-schmancy stuff

Archie and I took Vlad out to celebrate Vlad’s first football game. Flag football, not tackle–I was secretly celebrating that Vlad still had all his teeth and bones in the right places.

As our drinks were delivered, Vlad said:

“I apologized to Lucifer [previously referred to as Spawn of the Devil and Devil Boy] for being so annoying.”

I suspended my margarita two inches from my mouth, made quick eye contact with Archie, and said:

“Noooooo!”

Vlad held up his hand and said:

“Wait, it’s part of my plan. I want to be friends with Luke, and Lucifer keeps butting in and saying stuff like, ‘You’re an idiot, Vlad.’”

I felt my heartrate kick up to about 160 and swilled my margarita.

“I thought if I could get him to think I want to be friends with him, he’ll leave me alone. I’m trying to create a triangle–Luke, Lucifer, and me.” Vlad traced a triangle onto the placemat in front of him.

Is this what it feels like to have your heart break?

I said: “Vlad, you haven’t done anything wrong. You know that right? You’re not annoying [a mother's gotta say what a mother's gotta say, even if it's not 100% accurate] and even if you were, it doesn’t mean Lucifer can be mean to you.”

“I know, Mom, but this is my plan. I think it’ll work.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to be in this situation. For a while I considered calling Lucifer’s mother and trying again with the nice talk. But what could I say, “Your kid’s being mean to my kid, make him stop!”? Doesn’t there come a time when a parent steps back and lets her kid deal with a situation? I sense in my soul that we’re at that point. Afterall, I can’t take every parent of every person who’s mean to Vlad in his life out to lunch. That could get expensive.

I realize, too, that this issue is bringing up my own memories of awkward pre-teen years. I remember being so excited about finding a ladybug on my arm and walking around the schoolyard trying to show everyone how cool it was. Next thing I knew I was at the bottom of a pile of kids who were taunting me for being such a baby.

So I’m trying to coach Vlad on how to deal with Lucifer.

“Pretend it’s me next time he says something mean to you,” I tried the other day. “Roll your eyes and say ‘Whatever’ as you shrug your shoulders.” I hate when he does that to me, it would have to drive Lucifer back to the hole in the ground he came out of, right?

Vlad came back the day after I gave him this sage advice and told me he tried it when Lucifer told him to shut up.

“How’d it work?”

“Okay, but I still felt bad. Then I asked him not to say ‘shut up’ to me, it wasn’t very nice.” My sweet little baby boy.

I look helplessly at Archie, who looks hopelessly back at me.

“You’re a good kid, Vlad,” Archie said. I looked away so as not to cry. “You know we’ll always be here to talk to you about whatever you want to talk about.”

“I know, Papa,” Vlad said. “Here’s the thing: I need to have a playdate with Lucifer to seal the deal, make him believe me.”

I looked quickly at Archie and suppressed the urge to scream.