This happened a few months ago. Enjoy! We miss you guys!
For three months, I’ve been living with Superman. Fantastic as it sounds, I have to admit it’s not much different from living with any other mortal. He eats and sleeps like the rest of us, fusses when upset. There is, of course, the continual display of amazing feats of strength, the aftermath always left for me to clean up (note: Superman isn’t the tidiest fellow). Couch pillows tumble like boulders through the living room, construction paper and other flotsam are ripped in a single tear, box juices are drained at unprecedented speeds. Superman is a toddler.
We don’t question if, but when, Superman will appear each day, and if he will need help tying his cape. When he wears his costume, he is Superman. Otherwise, he is Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter from the great Metropolitan newspaper, though he is unsure what a reporter even is. The reality has permeated all of us: I am not Mom, I am Lois, and I am beautiful and need saving. Dad is not Dad: he’s suspect, a bad guy, often the victim of an impromptu punch from a walnut-sized fist. They are not carrots: they are super carrots. It is not bathtime: it is super bathtime. The hero tears through the house at a pace that, honestly, is no faster than an adult casually crossing the room. Blond hair unnaturally twisted with pomade into a curl over his forehead. Arms pumping. He glances over his shoulder to ensure that his cape is raised on the tuft of wind. The pretense is cute; we remember our own days of becoming something more than we were.
About five weeks and thirty machine washings into the costume wearing, I locked my keys in the house on the way out to the car. Supie and I were already running late. He sat in his carseat with his fruit snacks and a drink, waiting with immortal patience. I paced the driveway with hand on forehead, already beginning to sweat under the morning sun, momentarily stunned at what to do. Break a window? Surely too dramatic. Call my husband? Busy at work. Climb through the front window left open for fresh air? No way I could hoist myself over the bushes, much less fit through so narrow a slot.
It hit me. I hurried to the car, waving my arms wildly. “Superman! I need help from Superman! You have to save the day.” He could tell I was serious.
In a flash—juice pushed aside, fruit snacks thrown down and strewn over the car floor—he was ready for action. Unbuckled, he ran as fast as he could to the house. I pulled off the window’s screen and he flew in, circled around the living room for effect, and unlocked the house door. This wasn’t our much-played scenario where Superman saved Lois from the encroaching plastic dinosaur with scary red eyes. This was real. He used the powers that only he possessed. He saved the day.
Where did that line between pretend and real go? Who cares? Reality can be overrated, anyway. Superman was laying for himself the foundation of any dreamer: the belief—or at least the hope—that we possess a capacity for greatness, perhaps even beyond our natural ability. And that, in all the planning and dreaming, when the real chance for action comes along, we are ready.
