'Spider-Man' Has Mom, Son in Same Web

The Boston Herald

He's been grown and gone for so long that sometimes I think I dreamed him. Even his room is kind of gone - the striped gold wallpaper scraped off years ago, the trophies on his bureau, the signed baseballs, the football pennants, all stuffed in a box somewhere. Now the walls are painted yellow and the comforter is white and the curtains are lace, and though my son still sleeps here when he visits, it's not his room anymore. We even call it the guest room, for in it there is no trace of the boy or his childhood.

And yet, at any time, I can stand at the door and see him and the room exactly as they were: clothes on the floor, a baseball glove in the corner, baseball cards and comic books and a bottle of Coke on the bureau; the shade pulled down and my son asleep, the covers askew, the bed way too big for him.

I used to think he would never fill that bed. I used believe that I had all the time in the world before he would grow up.

He wanted to be Batman before he wanted to be Spider-Man. I know this because when he was four years old I made him a Batman costume  for Halloween. We took pictures. He's growling at his sister in one. She's dressed as Little Red Riding Hood. There they are, a toddler clutching a basket and smiling; and next to her a little boy, a wisp of blond hair sticking out of his hood, squinting and trying his best to look mean.

With Spider-Man, the game of pretend was different. For Spider-Man wasn't just for Halloween. He was a hero for all seasons. My son read Spider-Man comic books winter, summer, spring and fall, and wore Spider-Man T-shirts and sweatshirts and Spider-Man pajamas, which he slept in until the top barely covered his belly.  And - he'll kill me for this - he wore Spider-Man Underoos.

You think that kids know the difference between fantasy and reality. And they do, most of the time. But just as I used to sleep with my window open when I was a child, in the hope that Peter Pan would fly in and take me to Never Never Land, my son slept with his dreams, too. He knew that pajamas could never turn him into a super hero because he knew, the way all children know, that magic isn't in things, that wands and silver bullets and fairy dust are all make-believe. 

But magic can be in people. Evel Knievel was magic. And Fred Lynn was magic. And the people at the circus who swallow fire and make lions disappear. They were magic, too.

Spider-Man lived on Wall Street and blended into the crowd when he wasn't saving it. He could be anyone because he looked like everyone. Only he wasn't. He was magic.

My son was seven when we drove down Wall Street. His youngest sister had just been born. "This is where he lives," he said, awe in his little-boy voice that I would recognize even now. His belief trumped his disbelief. And why not? He'd never seen such tall buildings. Or so many people everywhere. "Spider-Man could be in one of those buildings, right now," he said. 

He almost convinced us. Just as I can look in his room now and conjure up the boy he was, he conjured up Spider-Man that day.

"Spider-Man" the movie opens today. My son will see it in one place and I'll see it in another, because miles separate us now.

But memories still bind us. His memories of a superhero with  super powers who wanted to make the world better, and my memories of a little  boy who made my world better simply by being in it.