Steve is sitting on the sofa, reading a book.

Steve: It's just about time for a bath Aidan.

Grandma (to Aidan): Where are you going?

Aidan: I have to make a very important phone call.

Grandma: Who are you calling?

Aidan: Someone who disappears people who are sitting on sofas reading.

While Aidan makes his phone call, Steve gets up and goes into the kitchen. Aidan returns and is alarmed, almost tearful to find that Steve has actually disappeared.

______________________

Aidan hates taking a bath. After this conversation last night, Steve brought him upstairs and managed to bathe him while he screamed and flailed like he was being murdered.

Steve handles him gorgeously, he never loses his patience. He remains gentle and compassionate throughout the whole ordeal. It's best that Steve bathes him because I don't handle it gracefully. The adrenaline starts pumping for me and I become adversarial. I get angry that he is being so unreasonable and I feel violent. Not that I hit him or anything, but my manner becomes violent. I don't know how else to handle him - it's like I can't physically force him to do something and remain gentle. It's an impossible contradiction for me but Steve is miraculous at it.

We only bathe him about once a week because it's such an ordeal. A wet washcloth often does the job until his hair gets to grimy and flaky to deny the need for clean. Of course he hates having his nails cut too and sometimes I wonder if people at the playground or the library notice how filthy he is.

I didn't worry about this as much upstate. I know plenty of kids up there who get as blissfully dirty as my boy. The kids here are squeaky clean, not unlike the leaf-free landscaping. I wonder, do they all go willingly? Or is there a nightly bath crisis in homes all over Long Island? Maybe there are dirty kids here and I just haven't found them. I'm going to start looking at fingernails.