The Two Faces of Cass Cooley

Backyard Cass: the wild child
I'm really going to miss the hot summer days with my crazy toddler boy who strips to the buff the minute he sees the garden hose. And plays in the pool with a bike helmet and a plastic wheelbarrow full of sand. He picks all our vegetables before they're ready ("lookie, mama: baby peppers!"), stomps on our tall grasses and empties the sandbox one shovel at a time. I'm terrified of him starting his new calm hippie preschool, where I'm 90 percent certain he will hurl the faceless dolls across the mass media-barren room, eat raw bread dough when the teacher isn't looking and sabotage the orderly "rhythms" of the day.



Preschool Cass: the well-behaved, dapper scholar/prodigy
He was perfect. Beyond perfect. OK, there was one tiny embittered toy battle, but in Cass' defense, he did have the dancing wooden monkeys first, before they were cruelly ripped from his gentle hands. Influenced by his peers (to a frightening degree), Cass decided to try out the big-boy swing for the first time ever. And he wasn't ready to go home when it was all over. But I don't think it was that exact detail that broke my heart just a little bit today.