National Sanctity of Human Life Day

by Robert Eringer

Robert Eringer and his “little buddy”

The Dino Diner

My best buddy in the whole world is my four-and-a-half-year-old grandson and what he likes most is to take short road trips with me somewhere fun and interesting, so off we go-go-go. 

I call him “my little guy” and “my buddy” and sometimes “The Dude” and I love that he’s cuddly and affectionate and lightly touched by autism, which I look upon as a gift and a blessing, as if kissed by an angel.

I help The Dude into the car and buckle him into his child seat and power up an iPad to ensure his contentment during a 90-minute ride from the American Riviera to the big city where I lived when I was his age.

My little guy giggles with delight as he battles dinosaurs that eruct comical side effects from his screen. Dinosaurs are his passion, and he has collected many toys reflecting his passion, from plush ‘sauruses of one type or another to hard plastic dinosaurs in all shapes and sizes, to a walking, roaring, lit-up Dominus T-Rex – his favorite dinosaur of all, almost as tall as himself. He knows more names of dinosaurs than I ever knew existed, along with their habits and appetites and every piece of trivia associated with the movie Jurassic Park, which he has watched multiple times.

Forty minutes on, rolling through Camarillo, my buddy feels a twinge of impatience. “Are we almost there?”

It isn’t a whine, just a legitimate question for an active little boy sitting in the same spot for what must feel like an eternity.

“See those mountains up ahead?” I say, pointing through my windshield to the Conejo Grade in the distance. “We’re going to zoom right over them to the other side!”

“Zoom over them?” he says in wonderment, and maybe that’s one of the things I adore most about this little guy, his sense of wonderment, and his ability to absorb, process and retain new information – and then play it back to me, often with a new twist.

I tackle the grade with ferocity, zigzagging lanes to overtake cars whose engines are less challenged than mine by the road’s seven percent incline, cresting the peak then commencing our descent.

My little guy is momentarily awed by my fancy steering, and gleefully cheers me on before re-absorbing himself with colorful dinosaurs dancing across his iPad.

Approaching the valley, traffic thickens. “Almost there,” I say.

He stays with me, no further protest – and soon we ramp off, cruising city streets, and he looks around enthusiastically, repeating my words with merriment.  “City streets!”

A few minutes later we arrive at Farmers Market, an LA landmark since it was founded in 1934 and, when I was a freckle-faced dude myself, a regular go-to for my mom and dad, my brothers and me.

Much of Farmers Market is the same as it was half-a-century ago, starting with the pie maker whose large picture window allows for shoppers to watch the bakers kneading dough, filling tins with pie crust and fruit and feeding ovens with their heavenly confections.

I pick up my buddy and show him the action and, for 15 seconds or so, he is mesmerized by the activity on the other side of the partition. Then he’s ready to roll into the old marketplace.

My little guy’s favorite food in the whole world is pepperoni pizza, and that’s why we’re here; the best pizza pie from my childhood is served at Patsy D’Amore’s, part of what may be the world’s first food court is unlike anything you see in shopping malls. For a start, these stands are all mom-and-pops – no chain franchises – the way America once was.

My little guy doesn’t just eat pizza; he has a love affair with it. As I devour my own plain slice, I watch him bite into pepperoni, cheese, and tomato sauce; watch his bedroom eye savoring the flavors.

Adjacent to the pizza shack is Bob’s Donuts so, when my little guy is done with pizza, I lift him in my arms and point out all the varieties of freshly made donuts.

“Which one would you like?” I ask, though I already know he will choose a donut with pink frosting and rainbow sprinkles. (When you ask The Dude what his favorite color is, he always responds, “Rainbow.”)

Back at our table, while I sip coffee and nibble an Old Fashioned, my buddy dives into his frosted donut – literally, headfirst – licking at the sprinkles, eventually leaving the dough for sparrows that make their presence known with bold approaches.

My little guy delights in little birds, in living creatures of all kinds. He loves animals, especially dogs, and it is uncanny how much dogs adore him. They are drawn by their sixth sense to the innate warmth he radiates; they snuggle into him, lick his face, and in return he strokes them with a tenderness that prompts dogs, large and small, to roll over, wag their tails, and refuse to leave his aura of genuine love and affection.

Afterwards, I walk hand-in-hand with him to an old wishing well. When I was his age, I marveled over the hundreds of coins and paper money at well’s bottom, wishing I could scoop it all up and make this treasure trove my own.

I hoist the dude up onto the rim of the well and hand him one of the quarters I received in change at the donut stand, and say, “Make a wish and toss it in.”

My little guy thinks about this very carefully with his dreamy eyes, and finally says, “I wish I were alive.”

“But you are!” I chuckle.

And like most little boys he is already on to the next thing. In this case, the market’s toy store.

Eagerly, his little legs keep up with my adult stride as we weave around stands that sell nuts, stands that sell fruit, stands that sell chocolate, and produce, and so on, until we reach… Toyland!

My buddy is in his element now, and he knows precisely what he’s looking for:  Dinosaurs. 

 It does not take him long to identify his prize:  a plastic cylinder filled with different colored miniature dinosaurs. Once in his custody, he spills this collection onto a picnic table and sets them up, one group facing the other in preparation for battle, all the while sucking a blue Tootsie Pop, I chose for him at a candy stand.

At some point, and I have no idea how it happens, I turn around and my buddy is gone. His toy dinosaurs remain on the table, but he is nowhere to be seen. I jump up, panic-stricken, looking around in all directions, a sea of people around me, but no little guy. I take a few steps, peer down an aisle, nothing, a few steps the other way, calling out to him, in normal voice at first, then louder, and louder still. And just when I think I’ve lost him, I hear from beneath the table where we’d be sitting, “Here I am,” with a joyous laugh. And I’m so relieved I could cry.

We commence our drive home, and my little guy is tired, and perhaps weary of the road, because in no time at all, hypnotized by passing scenery, he falls into deep slumber.

By the time he awakens we are nearly home, and it is time to plan dinner.

 The only type of food my buddy likes besides pepperoni pizza is chicken nuggets and noodles, and we settle on the latter, and after he’s eaten, he tells me I make the best noodles ever.

I have my routine in the evening, a couple glasses of wine with friends at a nearby restaurant, and it twinges my heart when my little guy tugs at my leg, begging me not to leave, and then, this ritual over, he waves at me through a window as I depart, and blows me a kiss goodbye.

He’s waiting for me, of course, when I return.

 “Papa?”  He is standing at the top of the stairs, and when he knows it’s me, he comes sliding down, literally, by the seat of his pants.

Bedtime.

Which means anything but sleep for my little guy.

“Let’s fight!” he says, a glint in his eye, his body twisting with boundless energy after he climbs on the bed and grabs a pillow.

And then we are at it, clobbering one another with pillows, and he especially delights in landing a pillow smack across my face and I react like a cartoon character, sounding off “boing, boing, boing” as I back up and crash into a wall.

Next, we move on to a game we call Mechanical Arm. Laying down flat on the bed, I plunk my right elbow down and move my forearm back and forth. My little guy controls the speed of my arm’s movements from an imaginary switch in my ear. As my arm swings back and forth, he tries to tackle it and stop it from moving; that’s his challenge. But no matter how hard he tries, he can never stop the Mechanical Arm. Sometimes my arm flips him upside-down, and he’s dumbfounded for a long moment before reposing himself for the next tackle.

After that, my buddy wants to play our Tent and Fishing game. We are lost in a forest and so we get beneath the covers and, with our feet, raise them like a tent as shelter from the night. Then we decide we’re hungry and we have to catch dinner, so we cast our imaginary fishing pole over the side of the bed. An imaginary fish swallows the bait, and we go through the motions of a catch, almost losing The Dude overboard a couple of times. Then we go through the motions of cleaning the fish and creating a campfire to grill dinner. And then we see a baby bear wandering toward us, lured by the smell of food, and we feed it. And then – Oh My God! – the mommy bear is coming for her cub – and she’s angry! So we push the baby toward her mother and hide inside the tent, all cuddled up, until both bears have sniffed around and departed.

By this time, my little guy is thirsty. I twist the cap of bottled water and hand it to him and he raises it to his mouth and drinks with sound effects – glug, glug, glug – that make me laugh, and he says, “What are you laughing at?” and this makes me laugh even more.

Finally, my energy ebbing (while his still flows), it is time for a bedtime story. 

“Five minutes,” he says (everything is always five minutes with my little guy).

“Okay, five more minutes.”

And so, it’s five more minutes of horsing around before we lay down for a story, more a dialog about a business project we’ve been devising between us in the preceding weeks:  our own restaurant, the Dino Diner. The theme, of course, is dinosaurs, and we are in the process of refining our menu.

T-Rex T-bone steak

Raptor Tails in Spinosaurus sauce

Pterodactyl wings in Stegosaurus sauce

Brontosaurus Burgers

Triceratops Tri-Tip Sandwich

Pisanosaurus pepperoni pizza

My little buddy has a great sense of humor, and we laugh with every new menu item.

After going through it a few times, my little guy turns on his side, and then he turns back to face me. “Will you be here when I wake up in the morning, Papa?”

“Of course,” I say.

I ask him if he is ready for the Sandman to visit.

He says no, he doesn’t want any Sandman to come, and that he’s going to keep his eyes open, as long as possible, to keep the Sandman away.

“Wait, Papa,” he says suddenly, sitting bolt upright.  “I have to rub the Indian’s nose.”

He’s talking about a wooden cigar store Indian head in the room.  I told him that if he rubs the Indian’s nose before he goes to sleep at night, he would not have any bad dreams.

So, he jumps up, rubs the nose, and scampers back to bed.     

And I watch as his eyelids slowly dip… lower, lower, and lower… until they close, and my little buddy is fast asleep.

*****

The Dude usually awakens before me. He likes to place his face inches from mine and wait for me to open my eyes. But on this morning, I awaken first and I feel him snuggled into my back. I turn so that I may study his delicate facial features and thick jet-black hair while he is still asleep, and such a good sleeper he is. But all I find is a pillow that somehow made its way beneath the bedcovers.

I look around and still I don’t see my little guy.

I amble out into the hall and into the living room.

“Hey, buddy,” I call out.  “Say here I am!” 

Nothing.  I check that the door leading to the garden is closed, and it is, so I gather he’s playing hide-n-seek with me, and I look around, but cannot find him anywhere.

“Say here I am!” I repeat, giving up.

Still nothing.

“Who are you talking to?” I hear from my daughter, on high, in an upstairs bedroom.

“My buddy,” I say. “Is he up there with you?”

“What at you talking about?” she repeats.

Now I know; he’s probably tucked into bed with her, giggling as I struggle to find him.

I head up the stairs and into their room.

My daughter is sitting up, bewildered.

“He’s not with you?” I ask.

“Who?”

“Your son.”

She looks at me in disbelief. “I don’t have a son, dad.”

“What are you talking about?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about my little guy. Your son. My grandson. Where is he?”

My daughter nods. “How old is he, dad?”

“Four-and-a-half,” I say.

And the nodding of her head turns sideways. “Would’ve been. Don’t you remember?”

“Remember what?”

“That’s when I had an abortion – about five years ago.”

“What?”

“I was only 18. You said I wouldn’t be able to raise a child so young as a single mother. And the obstetrician agreed. She gave me a number of a doctor in L.A. that specialized in late-term abortions. You drove me, paid for me to have it. Don’t you remember?”

Feeling greater despair than I’ve ever felt my whole life, all I can hear is a little voice in my mind asking, Papa, where are you?

*****

In March 2012, my 18-year-old daughter found herself four-months pregnant.

Her obstetrician scribbled the name and number of a late-term abortion clinic onto a notepad and handed the notation to my daughter.

We did not go that route.

Thankfully, my daughter gave birth five months later to a beautiful baby boy.

I cannot imagine how life would’ve been without my little buddy.

I cannot imagine how I’d feel today if I had paid to scratch from my daughter – from this world – my own flesh and blood, this happy boy, this affectionate soul, my very precious grandson.

In fact, I have two; they are both precious and my best buddies. They’ve since grown out of dinosaurs and the younger one no longer talks about our Dino Diner. Instead, we talk about the round-the-globe trip I’m planning for the three of us to take to visit sacred sites and various wonders of the world.