Just days after we brought him home from the hospital, we took itty bitty baby Max to the pediatrician for his first in-office visit. After getting checked in, we sat in the waiting room with our little nugget who was sleeping contentedly in his carseat. A couple with a bitty bundle in an infant seat of their own checked in just behind us. I couldn't help but overhear that their baby, too, was named Max.
Obviously, I struck up a conversation as they sat next to us. "Is that Max? This is Max, too!" I said, pointing. The mom smiled and said, "Yes! This is Max! Such a great name."
"Such a great name," I agreed.
"Is your Max short for anything?" the other mom asked.
"Yes! Maxwell! How about yours?"
The other couple exchanged a glance. "Oh! Maxwell! Of course! This is...Maximilian."
We oohed and ahhed over both versions of the name, of course, but for some reason, I got the impression that Maxwell hadn't occurred to them as an option for their baby's name and...they wished it had? Or maybe it was just my postpartum brain fog that imagined their reaction, so confident I was in our own choice.
We told Max this story the other night at dinner, after he mentioned that he couldn't imagine being named anything other than Max. I asked, "If you could go back and choose, would you have wanted a full name? Which would you have picked?"
He thought for a minute, contemplating his choices.
"Well, no offense, but I actually think I might have picked Maximilian because...you know...there's Max...well and then there's Max: A Million!" [Insert jazz fingers here.]
Oh, yes. I know, kiddo. Our Max is a million. There is simply no doubt about that.
Today, our Max: A Million! is 11. Eleven on the eleventh, his Golden Birthday.
*****
While he still enjoys baking for fun (and for the sweet result), he's changed career goals in the last year. He wants to be a fourth or fifth grade teacher now, instead of running a bakery. He assures me he'll still bake for me, though...
And, let me tell you: I cannot wait for that baking to happen in his own kitchen. Max is my PigPen. It's not that I'm a control freak who needs a perfectly clean house all the time.....well, maybe it's a little bit of that. It's also, though, the fact that we are now Always. Home. I can't help but notice his sticky fingerprints on the refrigerator door, his footprints across the floor, the crumbs that trail behind him as he snacks while dancing around the living room...alllllll the live long day.
It drives Max crazy because he sees me as a constant nag. He meets my nagging with typical 11-year old annoyance and exasperated, dramatic sighing....and he's not wrong; I do feel myself constantly pointing out (mostly his) things that could be put away, wiped off, picked up....but we're living in a pandemic, people. I'm controlling what I can control.
Max is hanging in there during this pandemic, though. He's adjusted (nearly) without complaint to everything we've had to throw at him...school is closed! No summer vacations! No get-togethers with friends! Okay, you can get together with your friends but you need to stay seated in these chairs, six feet apart! No visits with family! Okay, you can see your grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins, but stay far away! No hugging! Wear a mask! Wash your hands! Keep your distance! Okay, back to school--but at home! Figure out Zoom! And SeeSaw! And Google classroom! WASH YOUR HANDS!
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Zoom School
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He's adapting and figuring it out and rolling with the changes with flexibility and confidence and understanding. He is a big feeler and thinker....he asks a lot of questions and voices a lot of concerns (of which there are many these days...), but when it's time, he does All the Hard Things and he does them so well.
It helps that he's figured out some pretty effective coping strategies. Messaging his friends on his iPod, Fortnite meet-ups with his cousins, reading ALL the books, and music! So. Much. Music.
Max has been a music lover since the beginning. He's been a creator of music from the early days of pots and pans drum sets and making up songs to sing to accompany his play, through his relatively recently discovered talent of teaching himself songs on the piano with YouTube tutorials. He taught himself Let It Be for a school Variety Show and Hamilton's Satisfied because, um, it's amazing! He uses an online song-maker program that his music teacher introduced him to, creating rhythms and music that I swear sound like something you'd hear on the radio.
He's a consumer of music, too: he first fell in love with listening to music after seeing Frozen. We listened to those songs on repeat for. ever. I'm pretty sure it was Frozen that inspired me to get Apple Music (so we could stream Adele, One Direction, and Sara Bareilles--his first faves--in addition to Elsa and Anna).
From early 2010s pop, Max discovered Taylor Swift's 1989, which opened the floodgates...Katie Perry, Lady Gaga, Jess Glynne, Alicia Keys, and Beyonce...more Taylor Swift...so much Taylor Swift.
Then, in 2017, he discovered Just Dance. Just Dance introduced a whole new world of music and dance. Literally. He was dancing and singing to songs and artists from around the globe...Latin America, Israel, India, Brazil, and....[drumroll please]....South Korea.
2019 and 2020 has been all about K-pop. He can sing along with BlackPink in Korean and Japanese. He can name each of the nine singers of Twice: Nayeon, Jeong Yeon, Sana, Momo, Jihyo, Mina, Tzuyu, Dahyun, and Chaeyoung (Max needed to type that part for me...). He's a member of the BTS Army [swoon] and he can name, literally, a dozen other K-pop groups that I promise you've never heard of.
Max can watch a video once and he'll have the choreography to the chorus down. A few more viewings and he can dance the entire routine. He can mimic entire TikTok dances and he doesn't even have TikTok.
He's got music in his heart and in his soul, that Max.
I'll never forget my grandfather's words, just after he heard Max's name for the first time: "Max Harris!" he said, "What a name! I see that name in lights!" I wish he could have lived long enough to see just how right he was.
Maxwell. Max: A Million! Pure light.
He's creative.
He's a hard worker, a perseverant problem-solver, a prolific writer.
He's an illustrator and a designer and an imaginative thinker.
He's a math whiz and a devourer of just about any YA fantasy series (Three Dark Crowns and Red Queen, in particular).
He is Such. A. Tween.
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Bitmoji Max |
He's mastered the art of the eyeroll, can stomp like a herd of elephants, slams doors like he means it, and can render you DED with one sidelong glance.
But he makes up for it with post-fight hugs and I'm sorry's. He's free with his I Love You's and his snuggles. He's quick with his wit AND his righteousness because he knows that Love Wins.
He is our One in a Million Max.
This year hasn't been an easy one...he's missing his 5th grade year in school...his chance, at long last, to be one of The Big Kids of his elementary school. The news that he reads and sees and overhears is hard and heavy and worrisome. He knows that the repercussions of this administration (this SINGLE TERM administration) will echo on for a generation...and it will be his generation that is tasked with picking up the pieces of the fallout. He's in the middle....old enough to know what's going on, too young to be a change-maker. Or so he thinks. He doesn't know, yet, that just by being who he is, he's changing hearts and minds. Just by being unapologetically, Max: A Million! people are seeing what it can look like to live authentically. Just by being the bright, shining light he is, he can make the darkness disappear, one closed mind at a time. The darkness IS disappearing. Even if it doesn't seem like it in this moment in our nation's history.
The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice....
To our Max: Happiest of birthdays, in this weird and wild world, just be you, and we'll all be the better for it. You are so deeply and joyfully loved.
Lesson Learned:
Eleven years ago today, I rushed to the hospital, bleeding. I needed oxygen and a shot in my arm to stall a too-fast, dangerous labor. When I finally held this baby in my arms, I thought the scary part was behind us. I could not have predicted or even imagine the wild ride our entire country would be forced to endure beginning seven years later. I had no idea how much this baby, his mother, and this world could possibly change in just eleven fast-as-lightning years.
He points out my wrinkles and my gray hairs (earned, especially, these past four years). I call them smile lines and sparkles...he's not convinced. He sees the toll this world is taking on me and I know that's not fair. He's just a kid. We try to shield him from the hardest parts (especially the threats to the safety and civil rights of his LGBTQ community)....but he's so intuitive, he knows how bad things are, and how bad they could get, even if he doesn't know all of the details. He's just a kid....but a kid that, if we're not careful, will have to grow up fighting for his right to literally just Be himself. We can't mess this one up.
The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice....if we work for it.
When he sees me painting signs for a protest, writing letters to inspire voters, on the phone leaving voicemails for my elected officials, making donations to social justice non-profits, I hope he knows that I'm doing it all for him (and his brother and sister, too, of course). Each wrinkle, each gray hair will have been worth it if the world these three inherit allows them to grow up in good health and freedom.
My Max: A Million! I'll turn into a little old granny at 41 to prove the depth and strength of my love for you and to protect your fundamental rights....but I'm sorry....you're going to have to stan the BTS boys on your own, kiddo.
**Edited to add: Never mind. I've had Dynamite on repeat for days. BTS, I love you, too.