Dragon Biography

Yesterday morning I saw this writing-prompt: “Would you rather have a pet dragon the size of a cat, or a cat the size of a dragon?” As I read the responder’s list of advantages to cat-sized dragons, I realized I was grinning. I have lived with a cat-sized dragon!

When my son was an infant, we used Sign Language with him, because I had read that kids can understand—and use!—language, well before they’re able to form mouth-words. You just have to give them a language-format they’re developmentally capable of deploying. He was ten months old when he started Signing “Milk” back at me while he was nursing, and from there his language-use was off and running.

The infamous “Terrible Twos,” I think, are mostly a manifestation of frustration, when you have a child who’s unable to communicate his needs and wants. Christian had words, so we skipped the “terrible” phase. If he got cranky I chided him to use his words—and when he did, he could let me know what he needed, without the fuss and dramas of built-up frustration and tantrums. (I will also admit to enjoying people’s reactions. You could almost hear people’s eyes rolling at this crazy woman admonishing her baby to use words—and then jaws would literally drop when he authoritatively did display vocabulary… He was hungry, he was thirsty, his diaper was wet… He occasionally even asked for a nap when he got tired and tetchy.)

In addition to making life easier for all of us, his language-use afforded fascinating insights into how his mind was putting things together, as he worked on making sense of the world. For instance, he made some words into categories, to cover (as best he could) things that he didn’t have individual words for. He Signed “vacuum” at the lawnmower and the leaf-blower (reasonable extensions, I thought), and “cow” at other large quadrupeds.

He also created some Signs of his own, which we then had to figure out from his use and context. One of his inventions, we called his “Do–it” Sign—essentially a verb marker that he used in combination with Signs he had for things. “Do-it shoes” meant he wanted help putting his shoes on to go outside, “Do-it book” was a request for reading, “Do-it music” meant to turn on the CD player. I should say it was an imperative form of verb-marker.

It fairly boggled my mind, that an infant brain identified and filled that linguistic need. He made up other Signs, words that didn’t come from us. “Danger” was the first one—he was almost obsessively safety-conscious, even as a little guy.

But there was one Sign that we could not figure out, for the longest time—a motion sort of above and behind his ear. It was a very definitive sort of gesture, but our unsuccessful guessing at its meaning only seemed to frustrate him. It wasn’t until I was reading him a book with a blue dragon in it that I finally made the connection to his flurry of motion. He had made up a Sign for “dragon.”

As he added verbal language to his skill-set, we heard more and more about his friend Dragon. (For a while, Dragon answered to “Paul” and “Dragon-Paul,” but the lasting appellation was simply “Dragon.”) I never did determine what mysterious properties of Dragon-Physics enable an invisible dragon to have a color, but Dragon was blue. Except for that one time when he ran out of blue and became green. We visited the public library during his green phase, and Christian announced with dglee that Dragon had found some blue on the shelves, and he could check out with the books. He could be blue again until the books—and the blue—came due.

Dragon’s size occasionally changed, but he never got bigger than Christian. Usually he was sit-on-a-shoulder size, and for a while—right around the time Christian started school—he became pocket-sized. I suppose it was easier to take him to school in a pocket rather than having to find him a seat. And I imagine that having a dragon in one’s pocket would be a comfort, when everything is mew and has the potential to overwhelm.

Dragon was a busy little dude, always engaged in some dragon-variation of whatever Christian was doing in the people-world. He patronized the dragon-library (which featured fireproof book-pages, to prevent the potential disasters inherent in dragon-sneezes). His swim lessons taught the backstroke with wings, because dragon-arms are too small for the stroke The one area in which Dragon’s path markedly diverged from Christian’s was the beginning of his apprenticeship as a fireworks-maker (because that’s what grownup dragons do). Christian continued on with fourth grade, but Dragon had to start getting serious about his fireworks career.

Regardless of apprenticeships or any other circumstance, there was one constant, as the years went by: Dragon was always there. And even at a preschool age, Christian was adamant about the distinction between “invisible” and “imaginary.” We poor dolts of grownups couldn’t see him, but it would be an epic mistake to call Dragon imaginary..

When he was still very small, Christian and my mom had a little ritual when she came to visit us. The guest bedroom shared a wall with Christian’s room—with the bed, on each side, up against that wall. When Christian woke, he would tap out a request on the wall, and Grandy (as the kids call her) would tap back a go-ahead. Then he would climb out of his bed, pitter-pat from his room to hers, and climb into bed with her, to cuddle and chat before the day got underway. New sections of Dragon’s recent biography were a staple feature of those mornings..

It’s how I knew him for a Writer, before he ever started writing.

There was only one time, over the years, that Christian broke the unspoken rule and crossed the line of invisible-vs.-imaginary. He was six and we were walking across a parking lot with a cart-full of groceries, talking about what Dragon wanted for his birthday.

“Mom.” He caught at my hand, concern rumpling his small face beneath the curls. I don’t know what made him reality-check me, just this once, but that’s what it was. “Mom, you do know that Dragon is pretend?”

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