weaponry and rockets from Aunt Sue Ellen

 
The book on weapons
Once children grow out of the “little kid” stage in which gift giving consists of storybooks, Legos and games, it gets harder to pick something that they’ll truly like.
Being the mother of a girl, with Jaal and Lev it was problematic for me as our family’s gift chooser to avoid being placed in the lame-but-well-meaning older relatives category at birthdays and holidays.
Lev, in particular, was a challenge. His early fascination with weapons was something he did not grow out of. Though I wanted to get him something he would really like, the prospect of providing encouragement and war material ran counter to appropriate gifts from a card-carrying Quaker.
I envisioned future guilt should Lev grow up to join the NRA and Republican Party.
Medieval weaponry, swords, tools of the Ninja trade and fierce video games were Lev’s familiars. Of course, one can always opt out of picking just the right gift via money, especially appreciated as youngsters begin to understand the choices that open up with hard, cold cash.
I settled on things like an online gaming subscription and i-Tunes gift cards. I tried long and unsuccessfully to find a Metallica tee-shirt he’d requested (they don’t come in kid’s sizes), but recovered with a Metallica light switch cover. I caved with the book on weapons. Lev must have been about ten years old that Christmas. The books for children on the subject were way beneath his expertise. His downstairs Wallingford bedroom was an armory and he explained with sophistication on a visit there all of the armaments he’d collected. So I bought an adult book on weapons with lots of photos, drawings, descriptions and bits of history.
One summer when the boys came out to stay with us, we arranged for them to take a class in rocketry with our friend, Leonard Good, science teacher extraordinaire, the purveyor of loud noises and bad smells. The boys loved the day with Leonard, built their rockets and shot them high into the blue summer sky. A photo of the day shows Lev with an expression of pure pleasure on his face.
The winter before Lev died, as I perused PygmyList for family gift ideas for the upcoming holiday, Lev’s list included cash. Easy. In the space for descriptions of the gift wanted, Lev noted what he wanted the cash for. He said it was for his college fund. It stopped me cold. At 14, he was becoming an adult, planning for his future. One of the last gifts we gave Lev acknowledged his turn toward manhood.
I visited his room late last summer. It was in typical teenage disarray; clothes stuffed in the corner, shelves full of books and collected stuff, posters on the wall, memorabilia from his travels, a computer center stage; his personality everywhere. And there, lying on the bed, next to his pillow where he’d left it, was the book on weapons.

Aunt Sue Ellen (Rebecca’s aunt)