Sometimes I have such an intimate understanding into Charlie Brown’s life, specifically where Lucy is concerned. See, Charlie B. so very much wants to succeed and be generally accepted among his peers. Lucy knows full well how badly Chuck wants/needs acceptance and exploits this weakness to its fullest extent when she repeatedly asks him to play football. He is neither sly nor athletic, every time Lucy asks him to play she snatches the football away at the last moment only to leave poor Charlie flinging his rotund self through the air to land painfully on his back. Here he lies in humiliation while that cold bitch slinks off, a smug look on her face as she triumphantly holds the football. Poor, poor Charlie Brown. He never learns from his past mistakes. True, he has hope for the future and a sweet sort of naivete. But he is a fool. He will never succeed, Lucy will continue to mock him, the other Peanuts crew will always know he is a bit of a buffoon.
The above is what runs through my mind when Devon comes home from a weekend with his father. While Devon is gone I imagine he and I will spend a harmonious existence with one another upon his return. I picture us peacefully reading books and then him quietly coloring while I work on my computer. Then we discuss butterflies and perhaps bake a cake with each other before he asks to take a nap. After he opens his angelic eyes from his sweet slumber we will skip hand in hand to the car, retrieve the big kids from school and all will be beautiful in our lives.
Um. No. Nothing like that, actually. Instead Devon returns as something more like that creepy, resurrected kid in Pet Cemetery. A child possessed, he whirls through the house emptying his toys while he bellows at the top of his lungs. He then demands every single ounce of my soul. And if I don’t hand it over? The Demon Within is unleashed and he becomes Damion the Evil. He stomps. He screams. This happens every time. I believe part of is has to do with the transition from his dad’s home to the Manor. It must be deeply confusing that daddy lives behind one door and Mai-Mai behind another. The rules are different, the beds are different, the food is different. How fucked up must that be for a three year-old? But the other part? Devon coughed up a nugget of hell on my lap this morning when he divulged that his daddy always gives him chocolate milk and that, no, he would not drink his regular old white milk. Now the always part might be a bit of an exaggeration in his three year-old version of reality, this is the same child who told me he fed one of his dreaded preschool chums to the chickens one day. But the chocolate milk angle does explain part of the demon who currently dwells behind Devon’s cherubic cheeks. Chocolate milk might be nothing to get too worked up over, but for the past few weeks I have been trying so hard to detox Devon from sugar. It is not an easy process but it has made such a difference in his moods. The tantrums have been fewer, the whining less, etc. Now we are back to square one. I am not going to get on a full tirade here only to say this: just call me Charlie Brown.