It is pretty good. Part of the joy of our walk for every morning of third grade, and fourth grade, and the few weeks of second grade when there was actual school to walk to, was that while we walked, I read aloud from books one through five in a charming series called The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place. Brilliant, plucky Penelope Lumley is the star, fifteen when the story begins and a recent graduate of the Swanburne Academy for Poor Bright Females. She is sent to be the governess to three incredible children who were found naked in the woods of the wealthy Ashton estate, apparently raised by wolves. Because of their upbringing, they often interject awhoooo! and other eccentricities into their language, which, in addition to a wild collection of characters including a family of conflictual, passionate Russians, makes for an excellent read aloud experience. (You may not have heard my Russian accent, but I learned it from my theatrical sister and brother-in-law, and over the years it's improved considerably).
We would coordinate our steps, I would read in an exaggerated silly manner, and we'd crack up the whole way to school. By the last block, when other parents and kids were more present, I'd be instructed to whisper the story to make it less embarrassing, or just tuck the book under my arm. Then we'd hug goodbye and I'd walk as fast as I could to work, arriving five minutes late, smiling.
Things started to shift at the end of fourth grade. The sixth and final book was getting bogged down in details and authorial asides; the action wasn't moving fast enough for us. We skipped reading a few days. And then for awhile, we seemed incapable of leaving on time, getting snappish with each other and realizing we'd need to drive at the last minute, which was demoralizing. And then when fifth grade started this fall, we couldn't even find the book that we were halfway through, and tacitly agreed to forget about it.
But wow, did I miss it. And I couldn't bear to think of us abandoning the series that we only read on the walk to school a hundred pages before the end and six months before the end of elementary school, after which our walking to school and work together days will be over forever.
Because then she will go to middle school, get a little prickly, become a teenager, learn to drive, head off to college, start a career and marry someone I may or may not like, live anywhere on the planet she chooses and call if she feels like it. I mean, really, you can see where this all goes after fifth grade. Away.
I blame Frances going to college this year (even though it has proved thus far to be a wonderful development for all concerned, about which I have zero complaints) for my sensitivity to Beatrice's surefooted path away from childhood and towards adolescence. I'm holding a child on the cusp of adulthood at one end of my reach, and a child on the cusp of teenagehood at the other. A widowed mother cannot help but feel more confused and moved by the mysterious passing of time than ever.
Beatrice has always invited my silly side. She pointed out while we were waiting for tickets to the F&M Dance concert last week that most mothers don't speak to their children in meows. (They don't? No? Well, most mothers don't have you as their daughter - that explains my behavior.) I can still wrestle and tickle bad moods out of her. We snuggle through her bedtime routine every night. But all this is changing gradually beneath our feet. And so when we found Book Six of The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place on Thursday and I suggested we read it on the walk to school and she said, Um...why don't we just read it tonight instead?, I must have registered the disappointment on my face, deepened with mixed up hard feelings about my youngest child growing up and feeling embarrassed by such things, because she said Oh Mama, now I feel bad. I know you want to read it. We can read it tomorrow, okay?
Oof. She took pity on me. Also, my children find my disappointment and sadness unbearable; their guilt flares and they quickly apologize or in this case, submit to me reading aloud to them publicly. I try not to exploit this situation.
That said, I'm not scary or firm or disciplined. I really have no other power to effectively wield. So this morning I tucked the book under my arm and once we were across Lemon Street, I flashed it at Beatrice with pathetic, naked hopefulness in my eyes.
Okay, sure, she said, casual noblesse oblige coloring her tiny shrug of agreement.
So we read a few pages about Penelope Lumley's plans to escape from Saint Petersburg in order to be reunited with her beloved Incorrigibles, up until the corner where we now part ways, which is two blocks from school and a little closer to work, as I'm now the Head of Counseling Services and arriving two minutes late instead of five is slightly more seemly.
As we hugged goodbye, I asked, how was that? Do you think we should we do it again?
I liked it, said my five foot nearly four inches tall ten-year-old, smiling her gray blue eyes at me. Yeah.
Since we started saying goodbye on this corner, I have a habit of looking over my shoulder as I hustle towards my office, watching her walk on her own the rest of the way to school in the opposite direction. Sometimes she catches me, and we laugh and wave at each other across College Avenue. I can feel the invisible golden thread spooling out between us, sometimes tugging, sometimes long and loose, floating on the breeze. She looks so marvelous and independent in her backpack bedecked with plastic buttons she has selected that flash in the sun, dark golden hair flapping in rhythm with her gait. There she goes. That's my kid.
When I first began staying home with my little ones, when Frances was three and Gabriel a little baby, I could not believe how hard it was. At the end of every day I was exhausted. My emotional resiliency was regularly stretched to the brink, and my body was rarely my own. It seemed absurd that the hardest work I had ever done was mostly invisible - the bulk of it took place in my home, with no peers around to talk things through or share the burdens and joys. Mike had thrown himself into his new job at St. John's, which required not only long days but teaching two nights a week plus Friday night lectures and lots of Saturday prep. I was often on my own. It was SO hard, and no one knew about it! There wasn't a boss to pull me aside after a skillful response to a tantrum or peacefully executed transition to nap time and say, hey Meagan, great work. I really appreciate what you're doing for the team. Let's talk about a raise at your next evaluation!
(Okay, no boss ever said anything like that to me, but still).
That said, I've never understood when other people say congratulations to me after one of my kids has done something great. They did it, not me. Right?
But here I am with three children who are growing more independent with every passing day, who each have their own world that is quite separate from me and from their siblings, in which they make decisions and take risks and decide how much of themselves to share. It's extraordinary, really, to glimpse them out and about, living their lives. It's thrilling.
And lately, for the first time, I do feel proud of myself. There's my work, no longer invisible. It's walking to school, it's at a mock trial tournament in New Jersey, it's at a track meet an hour away. There's every time I gritted my teeth and walked away instead of yelled, every ride to an orthodontist appointment, every conflict I mediated, every bedtime routine, every harrowing pain I held and helped absorb - and there have been so very many. They are doing the hard work of growing up and becoming themselves, and I am doing the strange work of holding them close without holding too tight, doing my imperfect best to not get in the way of their growing - being here so they can be there.
Time! You are so impossible! My heart squeezes as we leave each stage behind; my heart thrills at what the present whispers about the horizons ahead.
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