When I was a kid, my sister and I got occasional visits from Donald Duck's nephews, our imaginary playmates. Huey, Dewey, Louie, and our favorite, their much-maligned, extremely smelly brother who never made it to the bigtime: Pee-ewy. (Huh, interesting: I just discovered we weren't the only ones to come up with a fourth brother.)
My son doesn't truck with that Disney shit. An only child to the core, he's got his own alternate-universe selves for friends. Keremiah, Peremiah, and Seremiah are three little kids who look exactly like Jeremiah, but have wildly different lives in their own versions of Madison. They're all great pals, though, and take turns visiting each other's worlds.
They pop in at unexpected times. I go to wake up J in the morning, and a boy who looks just like him tells me: "Guess what? I'm Keremiah! Jeremiah is here, but invisible." He rolls over in bed, making squishing noises. "I'm squishing him!"
Later, he amends these facts to the usual situation: while Keremiah is with us, Jeremiah is visiting Keremiah's home. They've traded places.
Our visitor is impressively consistent: everything he does in this world is new to him. When I get his breakfast, he tells me he's never tried Cheerios before. He asks me if Jeremiah does things in certain ways, and then tries doing them those ways. Their tastes, it turns out, are very similar.
"I'll tell you a secret," Keremiah says, over his first-ever bowl of Cheerios. "Did you know that…" he draws close and speaks in a dramatic whisper. "You are my mother too?"
"Ohmigosh. I didn't even know it!"
"How did that happen?" Pär wonders, across the breakfast table.
Keremiah is busy working out the details. "I have two mothers. You, and in my world… Tackie."
I ignore Pär's gleeful smirk. My alt-world self is Tackie. I am choosing to spell her name that way.
The boy elaborates further. "Do you know who is the king of Madison?"
"No, who?"
"I don't know who the secret king is. But the king of Madison is Peremiah!"
"Wow, that's pretty exciting!"
"I know!"
"And wait, there's a secret king?"
"Yes, but I don't know who that is," he explains patiently. "It's a secret. But did you know that you are a hero?"
"I am? Why?"
"Because our other mom, Tackie, is Peremiah's war leader. She does the fighting. And she is a hero. And Peremiah is the king. They're both very strong, and you have to be as strong as they are. Otherwise they'd be stronger than you. So you are a hero too."
I feel a challenge has been issued. I sit up straighter.
"I have two dads, too. Pär," he says, pointing across the table, "and Kär." (Note to Swedish speakers, he pronounces the K hard, not soft as in kärlig. There's a certain recycled familiarity running through these names.)
Pär perks up at the thought of his fantasy-world self. "What does Kär do? Is he a hero?" Bitterly: "I bet he's a farmer or something." Pär gets a little tired of being seen as the nice mellow one all the time.
Keremiah hesitates a moment, then says: "Kär builds things. Like when the train tracks are broken, he is the one who fixes them."
Pär, resigned: "That's cool."
Keremiah explains further. "The reason the train tracks are always broken is that the war leader — "
"Tackie?"
"Yes, Tackie. Tackie is always fighting and crossing the tracks and breaking them. So then Kär has to come in and he fixes them."
Which just goes to show that one's alternate selves don't fall far from the tree.
Later, when he's on his second bowl of Cheerios and Pär's gone off to shower, Keremiah speaks to me again.
"You don't look like my mom. My mom is Tackie."
"Um. Thank you..? So Tackie doesn't look like me?"
"Not really. She has two braids."
"Sometimes I have two braids."
"But usually you only have one."
"Other than that, does she look like me?"
"Yes. Right now she is wearing one braid, and right now your hair is all down."
"I miss Jeremiah," I say, because suddenly I do.
"Okay, wait just a minute…"
He runs upstairs. A moment later, my son appears in the doorway, giggling.
"Jeremiah! I missed you!"
"I missed you so much," he says, and it sounds heartfelt. "Did you know, I was captured for two days!"
"How did you get free?"
"I had help from the king of Madison."
"Peremiah?"
"Yes. Peremiah cut a hole through the floor and climbed in and gave me a knife to cut my ropes. It was good to see him. I haven't seen him since he was four years old!"
"What a great king!"
"Did you know that in Peremiah's world, I have three mothers?"
"Really? Me and Tackie and who else?"
"My third mom is named… Catch." He giggles. "Catch! And she's also my sister."
"She — uh…" (In my head: she's my sister! my daughter! my sister! my daughter!)
"She's my BIG sister."
"So you mean she takes care of you like a mother but she isn't actually your mother?"
"Right."
"Okay then."
"And also, I have three fathers!"
"Three! Pär and Kär and who else?"
He thinks about the name for several seconds, then gives me an irrepressible grin. "His name is… Farmer."
"Farmer?"
"Yes!"
"And is he… a farmer?"
"Yes! He takes care of so many animals."
