Scene: Harriet�s kitchen where AJ is eating lunch and Harriet is scraping icing off the countertop.

AJ: Mommy? I want to go to East St. Louis sometime.

Harriet: East St. Louis?

AJ: Yeah.

Harriet: (incredulous) Why do you want to go to East St. Louis?

AJ: ( in a �Well, duh!� tone of voice) Because I�ve never been there!

* * * * *

I must confess that I�ve never been to East St. Louis either, but it�s not particularly high on my list of places I want to see before I die. Still, it is where Miles Davis grew up, so that�s something.

The aforementioned icing was from AJ�s and my Third Annual Gingerbread House Extravaganza, which generally results in universal stickiness. AJ, myself and the kitchen counter are pretty much givens. This year, thanks to a moment of extreme klutziness by me with a slippery pastry bag, we also nailed the wall, a huge swath of floor and the back of an unfortunately located Mrs. Stein. Poor Mrs. Stein. But it is a particularly nice house this year and it is making our kitchen look festive, even as the rest of the house looks tired in that post-Thanksgiving way.

Today is supposed to be the last of the freak weather. It 65 and rainy. Tonight we�re supposed to have freezing rain turning to snow and I am already worrying about what to do with the car overnight. Because I�m a freak, that�s why. You see, AJ�s room is next to the garage and because the house is a split level, his resonant wood floor is just a few feet from the garage door mechanism. Usually, I leave the car out on my early mornings so I don�t wake him up. But I�m not especially keen on chiseling my way into the car at a quarter of 6 tomorrow, so I�m thinking I might just have to risk waking him up. But, of course, this is filling me with needless maternal guilt over putting my own needs in front of his. Oh, the humanity!

AJ and I have, in fact, been extremely busy. AJ seems to have taught himself the multiplication tables yesterday while I was out. He�s fascinated with charts and has been writing tables for himself for a couple of weeks now, I think just because he likes the looks of them. But now he seems to know them.

Last night he asked to learn chess, so we pulled out my fantastic childhood chess book, a book called Chess for Children by Raymond Bott and Stanley Morrison (probably hard to find, as my copy was at least a decade old when we bought it used on Portobello Road, London in the late 1970s). It has fabulous pictures and makes the game like a story of a battle, which has AJ intrigued. Plus each chapter has a short quiz, and AJ loves his quizzes. The other night, I heard him having an imaginary conversation as he sat on the toilet. �I just got my report card. It was really good. It was all �S�es. �That�s great!� �Yeah, but if it was a real report card, it would have been �A�s. You know, the grades are A and B and C and D and F. But there�s no E! Never E! Got it?� But I digress. Anyway, AJ and I got out the chess board and I asked him how many squares were on it. He took a quick glance and said, �64.�

�How�d you figure that out?�

�Well, there�s 8 on this side and it�s a square so there�s got to be 64.�

Okay then.

We worked through the first part of the book and learned about how pawns and kings move. Then we played a sort of game with just the pawns and the kings, which was quite fun and ended up with us calling it a draw as our kings continued to do-si-do their way around the board.

I�m glad AJ�s showing an interest in chess, because it�s something I�ve been wanting to relearn as well and it seems like a good wintertime hobby. The last time I remember making a half-hearted attempt at participation in The Bad Chess Club, loosely organized by a friend of RS�s and mine and made up of those of us who tended to be the last ones still sitting in the dining room on Sundays in our pajamas. And lets face it, playing chess beats driving to East St. Louis.

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