Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas by James Patterson Page A

washed-out blue overalls (so cool), your little work boots (just like Daddy's), and a Red Sox baseball cap (with the peak bent just so).
The cap had to go! You freaked out over it; I guess you thought I was trying to attach antlers to your head.
Here's the whole scene, just in case you don't remember it.
When we got to the You Oughta Be in Pictures photography studio, you looked at me as if to say, Surely you have made a grotesque mistake.
Maybe I had.
The photographer was a fifty-year-old man who had no kidside manner at all. It wasn't that he was mean, he was just clueless. I got the idea that his real specialty might be still life, because he tried to warm you up with a variety of fruits and vegetables.
Well, one thing is certain. We now have a unique set of pictures. You begin with the surprised look, which quickly dissolves into a slightly more annoyed attitude. After that you enter the cantankerous phase, which swiftly disintegrates into the angry portion of our program. And last but not least, irreconcilable meltdown.
There is a small consolation. At least you can't tell Daddy. He'd get too much mileage out of his I told you sos.
Forgive me this one. I promise I will never show these pictures to new girlfriends, old fraternity brothers, or Grandma Jean. She'd have them in every shop window on the Vineyard before dusk.
Nicky,

It was a little cool out, but I bundled you up and we took a picnic basket down to Bend in the Road Beach--to celebrate Daddy's thirty-seventh birthday. God, he's old!
We made castles and sand angels and wrote your name in big bold letters until the surf came and washed it away.
Then we wrote it again, high enough up so the water couldn't reach it.
It was such a total blast to watch you and Daddy play together. You are very much a chip off the old block, two peas in a pod, Laurel and Hardy! Your mannerisms, your ways, your gestures, are Matt's. And vice versa. Sometimes when I look at you, I can imagine Daddy when he was a boy. You are both joyful, graceful, and athletic, beautiful to watch.
So there you are, just back to our blanket from fighting sand monsters and friendly sea urchins, when Matt reaches into his pocket and pulls out a letter. He hands it to me.
“The publisher in New York didn't want my collection--yet--but here's a consolation prize.”
He had sent a poem off to a magazine called the Atlantic Monthly. They accepted it. He didn't even tell me he was doing it. Said he didn't want it to be out there just in case it didn't happen. But it did, Nicky, and he got the letter on his birthday.
I asked if I could read it, and Matt unfolded a separate sheet of paper. It was the poem, and he had it with him all this time.
My eyes teared up when I saw the title, “Nicholas and Suzanne.”
Matt told me that he had been writing down all the things I say and sing to you, that he'd strain to overhear my little poems and rock-a-bye rhymes.
He said that this wasn't just his poem but mine, too. He told me that it was my voice he heard in these lines; so we had created it together.
Daddy read part of it out loud, above the crashing surf and screeching gulls.
Nicholas and Suzanne

Who makes the treetops wave their hands?
And draws home ships from foreign lands,
And spins plain straw back into gold
And has a love too large to hold â€¦

Who chases the rain from the sky?
And sings the moon a lullaby,
And grants the wishes from a well
And hears whole songs sung from a shell â€¦
Who has the gift of making much?
From everything they hold or touch,
Who turns pure joy back into life?
For this I thank my son, my wife.
What could be better than this?
Absolutely nothing.
Daddy said this was his best birthday ever.
Nicholas,

Something unexpected has happened, and I'm afraid it's not so good.
It was time again for your dreaded baby shots. I hated to have to put you through it. Your pediatrician on the Vineyard was on vacation, so I decided to call a doctor friend in Boston. It was time for a visit to