Henry is our 16-year-old. He’s a lefty, which explains a lot. He has one of the most inventive minds I know. He’s been sarcastic since the age of two; at three one of his favorite words was irritating, as in “That’s so…” When he was five, he could decipher blindingly complex Lego diagrams; these days he can make a computer do almost anything he wants it to, from writing music to podcasting to editing films. For the past few years he’s been making movies–films light on words and big on visuals. He has the eye of a cinematographer–or a video game designer. This year he’s going to school for the first time, as a high school junior, because, “I don’t want to go straight from homeschooling to college.” Sounds reasonable to me. His brain is like a magnet, always has been. Recently he was explaining how space shuttles return into the atmosphere, and I asked him how he knew this. “I just know stuff,” he said. Yup. That’s Henry. He just knows stuff.
Lily, at thirteen, is as lyrical as her name. She’s a dancer, a singer and a poet. She’s all long limbs and grace, whether she’s doing jetes onstage or sashaying down the cereal aisle. She starts her poems with lines like, “I am a helping hand/ the high notes on a harp.” And she’s crafty. When she isn’t dancing or singing, you can find her at her desk, listening to show tunes while sketching gowns, making artist trading cards, knitting hats, or stitching up the cutest felt animals ever. She’s organized and competent, with a mind like a clipboard, and rarely has to be reminded to do anything. Except to clean up those crafts and her clothes. When she was five, she said to me, “Mama, I want to be on a stage. And I want people to watch me.” She still loves performing, everything from musical theater to ballet to Shakespeare. Ask her to go down to the cellar for a bottle of wine, a la Austin Powers. This audience of one, at least, never tires of watching her.
Theo, a.k.a. Mr. T, is our seven-year-old, and the resident hoot. He’s wacky. As a baby, he babbled as soon as he was able and hasn’t stopped talking since. He loves to invent characters and tell stories about them. Favorites are Scritch and Scratch–a boy and girl who become wolves–and a cyborg named Toby. The stories go on as long as you’ll listen. Literally. If he asks, “Want to hear a Toby story?” find an excuse or prepare for an epic. He’ll follow you around the house, around the yard, telling. He also spends large chunks of the day drawing fantastic, fantastical, comic creatures on any paper he finds. Our newspaper is rarely left unadorned. He narrates a story as he draws, smiling and holding his pencil full-fisted, like he’s stirring a pot of soup. Recently, reading a bedtime story, we came across the term stand-up comic. I offered a definition and his eyes lit up, like he’d discovered his calling. Uh oh. I’d better watch how I use him as material in my writing–someday it may be payback time.
Chris is my husband. He’s a mover and a doer–sort of like an energy bar, personified. He’s also a wiseacre who’s been making me laugh since I met him in the sixth grade, when he chased us girls with a plastic shark on a stick and called it an “electric gooser.” He carries on the property management/real estate development business that his grandfather started in 1932. When he was named Businessperson of the Year in the city where he works, a young newspaper writer stumbled upon the fact that Chris recently played bass with a “shoegazer” band in San Francisco, and headlined his profile, “These Days Zaballos Rocks at Real Estate”. That cracked us up. Actually, these days Chris has traded his music gigs for tennis matches, but he still noodles away on his Fender most nights. He looks like a cross between Jimmy Stewart, Hugh Grant and Paul McCartney. With a dash of Mr. Rogers–particularly apparent in the photo above.
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