My son, adorable child that he is, light of my life, bright and sensitive little soul, child that I’d walk across fire for…is driving up the fucking WALL. He’s in a new screaming phase. Not to be confused with any previous screaming phases, where he would get upset and shriek this bloodcurdling scream that would always scare the crap out of everyone. Nooo, this one is totally different. It’s these little one syllable short bursts that come about every twenty seconds. All the livelong day.

And he’s not upset or frustrated, he’s just trying to drive me to drink. He KNOWS he’s annoying me. Occasionally, I’ll hear him reminding himself, Inside voice, Pabwo. BWAAAAAAH! If I gently ask him to use quieter words, he’ll agree with me. ‘Top ‘Creaming, Pabwo. BWAAAAAH! The other day, I decided to count seconds between his little bursts of screaminess, like counting the seconds after seeing the lightning before hearing the thunder. They come about twenty seconds apart on average.

In the afternoon when I pick him up from school, his teachers greet me with the same wide-eyed look I see on my own face every time I pass a mirror. It’s sort of a cross between bewilderment and mild rage, except their shared expression has softer, more sympathetic edges. It says, “We adore your child, but we’re thrilled that you’re taking him away for the next eighteen hours.” We laugh nervously, about what an accomplishment it was to break him of his tongue clicking a few weeks ago, and how that was a really stupid thing to do. We brainstorm about ways to get him to do the tongue clicking thing again, hoping that he’ll choose clicking over shrieking. And then I drive home, clicking the whole way to Pablo, like I’m communicating with dolphins.

At home, we turn the TV up to 50, hoping to drown out the pattern of shrieking. The bursts come with uncanny regularity. We go outside and Pablo races across the patio on his bike, shrieking the whole way. I hold him closely. I stroke his hair and tell him how much I love him. He smiles at me and says, “Bike.” He studies a leaf, rolling it between his fingers, smelling it. He gazes up at the birds, perched on the tree branch, squawking at us. He squawks back. It’s tell him we’re all done outside, and it’s time for dinner. He shrieks. I call to him, and he shrieks. I take his hand, and he shrieks. I can keep rhythm with no metronome. No metronome. No metronome.

Many times now, Pablo has regressed just before he has some huge breakthrough. I’m thinking that after this is over, he’s going to be able to do calculus.

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