This morning, Wade and Henry were playing with superhero action figures, talking about their costumes and their powers and their enemies, when out of the clear blue, Henry said, ‘Dad, remember that time that you took me to the pool and I got a sunburn?’

This was two summers ago, when Henry was three; Wade took an afternoon off and took the boy to the pool. He forgot to put sunscreen on either of them, and they both got burned. It was Henry’s only sunburn ever and because he has an incredibly high pain tolerance, it didn’t really bother him (it wasn’t all that bad, actually) but it was one of our less good parenting moments and not something we really want the boy to call to mind when he thinks of his childhood.

‘Yes, I do remember that,’ Wade said, ‘and I still feel bad about it.’

‘Yeah,’ Henry said sadly, ‘I feel bad about it, too.’

Nothing like rubbing it in, well after the fact.

Charlie has been calling up some interesting memories as well, although his are more weird than sad. The other day at lunch, he and I were chatting while he was taking his sweet time with his fruit. I don’t know what I said, something about him being the baby, and he said, ‘I’m NOT a baby. I’m a BIG BOY.’

‘Yes, you are,’ I agreed.

‘I’m not a baby because you don’t have to feed me. Babies need to be feeded and I can feed myself.’

‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘But I remember when I used to feed you, when you were a baby.’

‘I don’t remember that,’ he said.

‘You don’t, huh?’ I said.

‘No. But I remember when I was an alien.’ He starts to laugh. ‘And when I was a SHADOW!’

‘Anything else?’

‘No, that’s all I remember.’

That seems like enough, really.

Yesterday the boys and I were playing Pirate Ship, and then Henry decided he wanted to play Doctor, but Charlie still wanted to play Pirates, so we played Pirate Doctor (the Pirate Doctor says things like, ‘Arrr, ye be having a broken arm there, lassie! I’ll be puttin’ a bandage on that there! Arr!’)

Henry was performing some complicated proceedure on my hand with a flashlight and some plastic tweezers and a pretend stethoscope, to make the blood flow in the right direction. So I told him about the four chambers of the heart and how blood flows through them and how important it is that all of the parts work properly. And then I told him about how, when I was pregnant with Charlie, we had an extra 3-D ultrasound because there was some concern that he had a heart defect (no heart defect; apparently, he was holding the umbilical cord during my exam and it slowed his heart rate down. More evidence that the boy is out to get me).

I told the boys that the doctor used a special machine to show us pictures of Charlie’s heart and of the blood moving in and out of it. ‘And,’ I told him, ‘we could see all your teeth, and the bones in your hands. You were sucking your thumb!’

‘I was?’ he said, looking at his thumb.

‘Charlie,’ Henry said seriously, ‘do you remember that?’

‘No,’ Charlie said sadly. ‘I don’t.’

Henry looked at me skeptically. ‘Are you SURE he was sucking his thumb?’

Yes, I’m sure.