But at a time of life when he has yet to master the pronunciation of the letter r, our “gwandson,” Finnegan, now possesses a 4-year-old’s wisdom.
And that’s considerable.
Like I was as a child, he’s a picky eater.
So, I fully sympathize with him about how often he’s under to put foreign objects his mouth that so many other people unaccountably call food.
During the summers my brother and I spent with my grandfather and grandmother in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Grandma Salli complained all the time that I ate like a bird and looked like a rail.
That obviously was frowned on in a farm community and in the family of a railroader like my grandfather.
But things weren’t just doubly bad for me in those days.
They were triply bad.
Because, as my mother was quick to remind my grandma, my older brother, Bill, ate like a bird, too — a vulture. And looked more like a locomotive than a rail.
Still, no amount of family pressure could convince me that Brussels sprouts weren’t the two dirtiest words in the English language.
Fast forward two generations to this spring.
In the weeks before Finney’s birthday, our daughter tried to leverage the big day in a way that would pry open his mouth so she could broaden his diet.
And that was reasonable, given that, aside from sweets, Finney indulges only three basic food groups: yogurt, fruit and Cheez-Its. (A court-appointed attorney would at this point submit for the record that his client recently broadened his palate to include the White Cheddar Cheez-Its.)
Despite our daughter’s best intentions, however, it remains true that she took advantage of his innocence to extract a promise — the promise that, once he turned 4 and reached a considerably higher level of maturity — he would start eating a wider variety of foods.
Or at least try them.
An early indication as to how this would go was provided by their family’s busy schedule.
The availability of a park required the celebration involving his preschool entourage to be held about a week before the big day.
And it went well. There’s nothing more charming than a nice day in a park filled with balloons, unicorns and children with tongues the colors of Popsicles — except when it sets off a hug fest.
Grandma and I got the special treat at party’s end when, given the choice, Finney excitedly declared he wanted us to drive him home.
On the way — and in an effort to be supportive of our daughter — my wife mentioned to Finney she heard he was going to start trying new foods when he turned 4.
The response came like a fastball thrown under the chin.
“I’m not 4 yet.”
And you’ve got to give the boy credit.
On the one hand, it indicated his promise to his mother was about as shaky as Jell-O on a roller coaster.
On the other hand, somewhere in the olfactory region of the brain, he had sniffed out the plot.
While no one can blame a parent into hoodwinking their children for his own good, one can take little joy in watching a 4-year-old kick himself for making a promise — partly because there’s something special when the kicking is done with those little Crocs that have the big alligator eyes.
No, he’s not yet articulated it. But he someday will realize that his mother (who is north of 40) and his grandparents (combined ages north of 130) tricked him into making a promise he knew he couldn’t keep.
I don’t know that I could teach Finney to say Shakespeawian.
But I know that among the things children learn as they grow are the rules of the crafty games we play with one another. How the way we get along is a balance between the things we want to do what those we love — and who love us — would have us do.
It’s part of what the Bard was thinking when he wrote a line I’m pretty sure I could teach Finney to say: What a tangled web we weave.
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