A Bowl for a Drum, a Broom for a Bass: Nurturing Imaginative Play

By Lu Hanessian
Issue 115, November/December 2002

Nicholas rummages through the kitchen, brandishing metal salad prongs. "Castanets!" he yells. "And," he adds, hoisting up an empty water cooler jug, "a tuba!" During our three years together, we've been learning the language of inspiration. I see an old broom; he sees an upright bass. I see satellite dishes on top of buildings; he sees trumpet horns.

I give Nicholas 20 feet of purple beads, a Christmas tree decoration. He sits at the top of our basement stairs and slowly releases the string from his hand, watching the shiny beads tumble to the platform below. "I'm making a waterfall," he explains, entranced in his rainforest reverie. Nicholas's friends have things, too. Three-year-old Jack owns dump trucks in 14 different sizes, a five-foot tall playhouse, and the complete "Thomas the Tank Engine" set of trains, bridges, tunnels, and play table. Ricky has three remote-controlled, jumbo fire engines with foot-long ladders and sirens that can be heard a block away. Justin has two bulldozer trucks the size of cocker spaniels, a motorized crane, and a racing car big enough to get pulled over for a moving violation. Mark has enough Legos to build a lovely extension on a house. There's a part of me that wonders if my son wants what they have.

Last year, I bought Nicholas that toy fire engine he "really, really, really" wanted. Half of it lies at the bottom of a drawer. And the little green tractor? He uses it to barter for other toys at the playground sandbox, demonstrating the Universal Law of Attraction to Other Children's Stuff.

Each toy that has come through our front door has seen an intense but brief period of play. Each has collected dust. Some have been stashed away and rediscovered after several months. Often, Nicholas will dismantle a toy and create another from its parts. Sometimes a gift is entirely eclipsed by the wrapping: "Look, Mommy! It's a new toy called a Bouncy-Bounce!" he squeals, playing the curly ribbon like a yo-yo. "And a cruise ship!" he declares, folding himself into the empty cardboard box. It's not that he is more excited about the ribbon than the gift, in a purely comparative sense; it's just that he is more excited about the playthings he creates--the astronaut helmet he discovers in a colander, the lawnmower he devises out of a rolling carry-on suitcase, the rhythm section he assembles using two whisks and throw pillows on the couch. Yet there's something about a makeshift toy that compels a parent to want to replace it with the real thing.

Nicholas is rifling through our junk mail. He spots a toy catalogue in the pile on our kitchen table. His nimble little fingers flip through the pages when he suddenly slams his palms on a photo of a boy playing the drums.

"Mommy," he says slowly, "look at deez drums!"

"Ooh, I bet they sound just like the wonderful drum section you made over there," I say, pointing to the arc of bowls on the floor in front of the couch and the metal spatula he has slipped in between the seat cushions as his high-hat cymbal.

Nicholas gazes at the picture of the shiny red drum set. "A bass drum, a snare drum, a tom-tom drum, an' a cymbal!" he says pointing to each one. "Mommy, can I please have doze drums? I really want dem!" On his face is a look of yearning, of melancholy. We are at a crossroads-at the corner of buy and don't buy, of materialism and my son's ingenuity.

"Can we buy dat drum set please, Mommy? So I can practice?" I feel something catch in my throat. My chest tightens. "Well," I say, "it is a nice drum set, but it's $99.00 dollars!" My boy begins to cry. "It's too many monies!" I hold him tightly as he sobs into my collarbone. A half-hour later, he's sitting in the living room arranging his drums: large cookie tin on its side as the bass, mixing bowls as snares, pot lids for cymbals, two whisks for drum brushes, cookie rack as his glockenspiel. The catalogue lies on the piano, on top of last weekend's New York Times. Out of his sight, on my mind.