Cheek to Cheek

• Lori Palminteri
• Uncategorized
• April 3, 2026

“Do you want to know something people don’t know?” The quizzical almost five year old asks me in his high pitched but somewhat nasally voice.

“Sure,” I respond.

“Under the crust of the Earth there is lava.”

“If people don’t know that, then how to do you know that.”

He thinks for a minute. He’s stumped and he likes to be a know it all.

“Because,” he says, “lava.” And then he runs to a slide.

Blaise, my nephew, is one of my favorite humans on the planet and I am one of his. He tells people when he grows up, he’s going to live with me. And though I know one day, he won’t have dreams of living with his old aunt, I can revel in his Peter Pan like attitude of never growing up, playing with trains, play-doh, hide and seek and cuddling while watching cartoons.

Blaise gives big hugs and tightly squeezes you while pressing his cheek unto yours. I cannot help but perpetually kiss his cheeks when I’m around him. When watching a movie together, he has no sense of personal space, often lying on top of you, using your face as a pillow so you’ll be cheek to cheek again. To be honest, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I know, of course, he will grow up, and this level of affection will fade (appropriately so), so I try to enjoy every second of it, and the moment I’m not with him (or my other nephew Anthony and niece Charlotte), my heart is filled with a longing till we are reunited again.

It’s hard to believe he has just turned five years old. And though I remember my life before him, it’s impossible to imagine my life without him.

“I want to be with you forever,” he said to me the last I slept over my brother’s house. Forever is a promise that no human can keep, but my heart swells with all the love this little guy can feel and express.

Blaise loves to learn and when he does learn, he loves to “boy-splain” to anyone standing around. He is incredibly curious and his memory is confounding. I must credit some of this to both my brother and Blaise’s mom Dayna for not allowing him to have a tablet. The difference between tablet kids and non-tablet kids is very obvious. Kids who are given tablets young and use them frequently have no attention span and their tantrums are far worse than the kids who are growing up like we did, without them.

My nephew is a mechanical boy. He’s always studying how things work and asking questions about engines. He is enthusiastic about trains, and so, assumes everyone is just as excited about trains as he is. He thinks it’s cool I live in New York City because I’m surrounded by trains. When I tell him I ride the subway, he says, “I wish I rode the subway,” and I don’t have the heart to tell him I absolutely loathe the subway and wish I never had to ride the subway again in my life.

Though it’s Blaise’s birthday, the boy himself is a gift to all that know and love him. Sweet, smart, cute as can be, and a little bit of a sick sense of humor (he definitely gets that part from my side of the family), he makes our world brighter and better.

We love you, Blaise. Even more than you love trains, no matter how difficult that maybe for you to imagine right now.