a lovely day

Do you know that song on Elizabeth Mitchell's Sunny Day album? It's been going through my head, because it is so very apt today. The clouds have parted, the sun is shining, and Frances mustered up all her courage and let me pull out a seemingly interminably loose tooth this morning. Triumph!

What else? I received some excellent news from a dear friend yesterday (in a real letter, no less!), Gabriel and I laughed in the car, watching Frances sprint to the first person she knew to show off the new window in her mouth at school, we had an impromptu cafe date before I dropped him off, during which Gabriel earnestly explained that biscotti makes him thirsty for chocolate milk. The loveliness of the day had me laughing and agreeing that he definitely needed some chocolate milk (rather than groaning and raising an eyebrow). I'm working on a new project that will be a lot of fun. And did I mention the sun was shining? Not only is it shining, but there is a new coolness in the air. It's still flip flop weather, to be sure, but the end of Chesapeake Bay-style bugginess and mugginess is in sight.  

Two friends wrote long, thoughtful emails to me about my last post, about boys and violence and imagination. Their feedback was immensely helpful, and because of it I was able to see how Gabriel's unique physicality is central to all this. In simpler terms, I hadn't considered how two weeks of rain had curtailed his outside run-around-and-play time, nor given enough weight to the fact that his naps are often interrupted to pick up his sister at school. So often as parent, when I start to make a problem complicated, I eventually come to realize that the bulk of it comes down to eating, sleeping, and exercise. 

So while I think there is more to Gabriel's sudden uptick in aggressive imaginary play and bad moods than being cooped up inside, those issues were amplified a lot because of it. He has been able to play outside for long stretches over the past two days, and his normal cheerfulness has magically returned. (The sports guys obsession has stuck, but it is far less troubling in the mind of a happy kid). A dear friend pointed out that I happen to be a high energy person, so it's not surprising that Gabriel is too. He needs to run and kick and make big sweeping motions, exercising that gross motor stuff like crazy. I also need to move; I get grumpy if I don't. When I considered the state of my own mood when I've been sitting still all day, it helped me to recognize the importance of motion to my boy's well being.

With our babies it's easy to be tuned into sleeping, eating, and exercise, as they are the most obvious things for us to respond to. But older kids can talk a good game, and distract you from the fact that sometimes they just need a snack! It makes me wonder about adults: we talk a good game too. Our bodies can get short shrift in the midst of all our everyday worries. Let us all take a deep breath, have a snack, take a walk, and go to bed at a reasonable hour tonight! Surely everything will feel more manageable if we do.

Have a lovely day, everyone. 

sports guys

While Gabriel napped this afternoon, I packed the car: a leotard and ballet slippers for Frances, snacks and water bottles, phone, wallet, and an enormous cardboard box which I filled with the Sunday Washington Post's sports section, the Sunday and Monday Capital Gazette's sports sections, scissors, and glue. Why? Because I hoped that the promise of another sports guys collage - the biggest yet - to be created during Frances's ballet class would stave off the afternoon demon that has lately begun taking possession of our dear Gabriel.

It did. But I cannot help noticing that my son's sports guy fever has been growing on a track parallel to his sudden rise in tantrums and anger. In the past I have marveled at his love affair with power: the way he channels dump trucks, volcanoes, and superheroes in wild dances around the house, emitting noises that mimic explosions and crashes, singing his own personal theme songs. It makes me smile. It makes me wonder about the effects of gender-bound expectations on us as we grow (he has expressed more aggression in three short years than I have in all my life, I am certain of it). Watching him, I have often wished I could punch the air and shout instead of stewing and simmering inside. It sure looks like a satisfying release. 

Which is probably why neither Mike nor I have intervened much as Gabriel's interest in weaponry and pretend violence has grown, or worried about his fascination with football. (Seriously, it is pretty cute when he shouts TACKLE! with little boy gusto and crashes into the couch). Tinker toy cannons are so innocent! Pirates and knights are the stuff of fabulous stories! What's not to like?

So with the exception of guns and killing talk, I tend not to intervene. (See this post I wrote for Mothering about an ambivalent episode involving water guns - I later buried them in the recycling bin). I heartily approve of imaginative expressions of aggression that are not intended to hurt anyone in real life. So healthy, I think to myself. Yes, let's express our feelings, all of them! 

But maybe while I was sitting back and smiling, we tipped over a line. If I tallied up every spare minute on the couch, in the car seat, or sprawled on the kitchen floor with the sports section, I think I'd find that Gabriel spends hours each day gazing at, and fantasizing about, football players. The more violent the episode captured on film, the better. Maybe instead of sublimating his three year old fiery anger into something manageable, his intense focus on tackling is only fanning the flames higher.

But you should see his face when we open the paper and the sports section falls out! It is pure joy, and the miracle of miracles is that a new sports section arrives every single day. Making collages out of the photographs is a bigger thrill still, and so it is a sincere pleasure to cut and paste with such a happy boy. We have no television, so these are the only images he has to go on as he cobbles together his own version of what god-like sports guys do in their heavenly sports games. There is a lot of tackling, dodging, falling, shouting, and jumping on the couch, to be sure. Can this really be a bad thing?

A therapist once told me that 'brain branching' happens around birthdays and half-birthdays. Brain branching, apparently, can make a person really out of sorts. And maybe all of the refusals to leave the car (or the house,  or the playground, or the backyard), all the swipes he takes at his sister, all the glowering, crying, and declarations of "I don't want to live here anymore!" can be attributed to a simple brain branch. That would be nice. He'll be three and a half next week; clearly it's the neurons!

But what if all the football guys and soldiers and pirates have crowded his imagination, hitting an internal saturation point, and are now poisoning my boy's normally peaceful relationship to the world? Whether or not that's the case, it is high time Mike and I worked out our own feelings about violence and instituted a related family policy. Your thoughts, dear readers, are very welcome on this one. How and when does violent play shift from something that can redirect aggressive feelings into something that can escalate those feelings? And how can we, as parents, discern where that fuzzy line is and then gently nudge our children a few inches away from it?

superbad

Here is what happened when Gabriel first made James Brown's acquaintance this morning.

How is it that I waited nearly three and a half years to have this particular dance/couch jumping party? Somehow the combination of a too-quiet rainy morning, fragrant granola toasting in the oven, and a selfish desire to rouse my boy's jet-lagging grandmother (who came to us last night straight from her annual idyll in Ashland, Oregon) inspired me.

And now? Now Gabriel has a word for his power fantasies that alternately involve karate, volcanoes, dinosaurs, monster trucks, knights, ninjas, superheroes, wild horses, and football.

He's superbad.

a heart is for love

I have been sick to varying degrees over the past couple of weeks. But yesterday the conditions were just right (I was discouraged, everything planned was easy to cancel, and Mike could help out), so I finally declared a Sick Day. Usually when I am sick enough to succumb and take a day of rest, our family becomes unmoored. Mama is...in bed? In the afternoon? The world becomes an absurd place where routines fly out the window and anything could happen. The sight of me halfheartedly gazing at a magazine on the couch at 5 pm instead of making dinner and dancing to our latest favorite song is fantastically disturbing to my kids.  

At least, it usually is. Yet on Sunday everyone was kind and accepting of my need for quiet time. Maybe my children are growing old enough to recognize that I have vulnerabilities of my own, to manage whatever anxieties that fact might elicit, and to feel some empathy for my sniffling. Maybe they are secure enough to know that a cold cannot derail everything good and true in our lives. Or maybe they were having too much fun with Papa to notice!

Mike took them to church in the morning, and later during Gabriel's nap Frances and I snuggled on the couch with our respective crafts. She took out her loom, and I made a Heart for Love, as Gabriel calls them. I first made these little hearts for the children on Valentine's Day, after finding inspiration here. A rudimentary crafter like myself relishes in this kind of small-scale project that results in something sweet, humble, and charming. I had made one for Frances on the first day of school, and everyone in the family took turns closing their eyes, solemnly clasping the heart of felt to his or her pumping-and-thumping heart of flesh, channeling all the love in the world into this new magic object. Then we ceremoniously put it in the front pocket of her backpack, because you never know when she might need a love boost during the school day.

Gabriel's school didn't start for another week, someone at Amazon dillydallied in sending his backpack, and somehow our accommodating, agreeable second child went off to his first day of school wearing a borrowed backpack emblazoned with the name Frances on it, containing neither talisman nor token. Oh, the indignity! Cheerful fellow that he is, this state of affairs bothered me far more than anyone. When his robot backpack finally did arrive, I knew I needed to make his heart immediately.

Watching me, Frances asked if she could make a pillow for Little Will, one of her stuffed animals, using the same blanket stitch. Amazing thing #1: she let me teach her, without a single feather ruffling. Amazing thing #2: she did it. All by herself. But a few short months ago, I don't think she would have had the patience and fortitude to see something like this through to the end.

But there it is, making life a little cozier in the menagerie at the foot of her bed. 

No one uttered a single protest when I retreated upstairs to read a novel in bed later that afternoon. I sank into the pillows and listened to Gabriel's funny little voice drifting through the open window as he and Mike planted kale seeds in the garden below. I so rarely get a chance to stand back (or lie back, as the case may be) and observe my growing family. My children are big, capable creatures who can easily withstand both a sick Mama and a tangled piece of thread. I didn't know that.

It's easy to fall into the rhythm of tending to dependent little ones, anticipating needs and becoming accustomed to the responsibility of being needed oneself. Ah, but they don't need me in the same way anymore. It's a good thing, I know, but part of me is lingering in another time that has very nearly passed, like a child at the playground who is not quite ready to leave.

Five more minutes, okay?

school of cake

I know I often wring my hands here about the difficulty of finding balance between work and family. It's a problem, being pulled in opposite directions. But this morning? This morning I got a break, because there was nowhere else in the world I would rather have been, nothing else I'd rather have been doing, and no one else I'd rather have been doing it with. Kitchen + cake-baking + Gabriel = blissful mothering.

Are there any pedagogical approaches to homeschooling that advocate cooking? All the time? I mean, what better way to explore science and math while nurturing a sense of imagination and wonder? First, we read the recipe together. After I peeled, Gabriel eagerly took to the job of carefully cutting the pears into many small pieces. He was wielding a knife! He was a dicer! Needless to say he was very pleased with his work.

Then came the most successful egg-cracking of his short culinary career, and witnessing the magical transformation of raw eggs into an airy, thick, pale yellow mountain via lots of high speed mixing. There was measuring, counting, smelling, touching. Sprinkling pear and chocolate that we'd cut into fairy-sized pieces onto the finished batter, then licking the impossibly delicious residue off our fingers. Oh, and did I mention the thrill of operating heavy kitchen machinery?

We luxuriated in a whole morning with nothing else on the agenda. Cooking with a small person, without the pressures of the clock or other children anxiously awaiting a turn (sorry, Frances!), is an activity that opens and opens and opens. It's beautiful. It's a place I love to be.

The only thing left to do, while our fragrant cake was cooling on the counter, was hang up the welcome sign for Heather, today's birthday girl (and a frequent commenter here, famous for her love of order, white sugar, and good clean living). She arrives at four, direct from a conference in DC. We cannot wait to see her and celebrate together!

welcome, rules

 

It's not surprising that the thoughtful list of rules that Frances' first grade classroom came up with, and that the two of us printed out to read together, is nestled in among scissors, homemade fly swatters, broken colored pencils and scrap paper on the kitchen table right now. I've been feeling a new rage for order lately, but my habitual disorder (which in optimistic times past I have called coziness) often gets the better of me.

The school year is underway, our varied schedules have become more rigid, and I had a tiny epiphany last week about structure, or rather, our insistence on living with a low level of it. When we don't know the rules--the expectations, the script, the what-will-come-next--we get majorly stressed out. And yet! I persist in my attachment to flexibility, spontaneity, and the ability to break rules when the situation calls for it. As in: you're right, who needs underwear anyway? Or: that cookie isn't the crumbly kind, I guess you could eat it on the couch just this once. Or: I know I said Saturdays were allowance day, but you're behaving so poorly right now I'm not sure. And I don't have any cash anyway. Maybe tomorrow?

Doesn't this inconsistency sound like a nightmare for a kid? To drive home the point: the only part of parenting that Mike and I totally kick butt at is bedtime. There have been modifications and adjustments over time but generally, the routine is always the same. There is no discussion or argument at the end of the day. I don't cave when it comes to requests to stay up later; those requests are infrequent anyway, because all parties know there is just no messing with bedtime.

The rest of the day, however, is up for grabs.

Until now! At least, I'm working on it. Area #1 of increased organization (and hopefully, peacefulness) is school lunches. I photocopied this chart from a favorite cookbook, Feeding the Whole Family. Frances and I brainstormed "growing foods," fruits, and vegetables that she would like to eat at school. We added those items to the Shopping List (another fine new innovation in our lives!), filled in the chart together, and hung it on a kitchen wall for easy reference.

Eating in general has been stressful these days. I knew when the children cheered at their last "Kid Dinner," explaining that they preferred eating separately because we don't give them a hard time about trying different foods, that we were in trouble. What could be more central, more hallowed and honored, than gathering around the family table to share a meal? How could my kids have negative feelings about dinner, one of life's most pleasurable and beautiful institutions? But they're picky, and unlike bedtime, we do not have hard and fast rules and routines around dinner. After I read this, I felt a new wave of inspiration.

I sat down with the kids two weeks ago and made a menu for the week. I know, many of you do this at home and have long understood how helpful it is. But I had never thought out the week's meals before. Like I said, spontaneity! Fun! I cook however the wind blows me, recipes be damned. This often means that by Thursday or Friday the picking are pathetically slim. I also get stressed out if the wind dies down to a gentle breeze and it's 5 o'clock and I have no idea what to make. So we're presently on week 2 of menu planning, and by far the best thing about it is that the kids partake in the decision making process. Before we even sit down, dinner has become less of a top down, my-parents-are-oppressing-me kind of affair.

We also came up with some rules for our family at dinner time the other night. It's all the usual stuff (you have to try one bite, only use kind words with each other, stay on our seats during dinner, etc) but articulating these guidelines together, and agreeing upon them, left me with a feeling of fresh optimism.

And finally, one more bit of order and intention in our lives. I bought Gabriel a bulletin board, just like the one his sister has in her room, and helped him choose pictures of the special people in his life. Mike and Gabriel hung it on the wall together, and we carefully placed the pictures and affixed them in place with push pins. Like all this rule talk and sign-hanging, I wanted to formalize and make visible the constellation of people who adore Gabriel. It is very sweet to see him stand motionless before his new bulletin board, gazing at the pictures.

Throughout all this ordering of family life, I had a nasty cold that developed into a sinus infection. We were also steadily walking towards September 11th, and I felt the day's approach palpably. Returning to the stories of loss and sacrifice, to the memories of that time - walking through the quiet streets of Philadelphia feeling lost, sitting on the steps of our church, watching people cry and pray - brought on bouts of a vulnerable, empty kind of sadness. In some strange way I must be trying to ward off not only tantrums and stress, but illness, accident, even widespread tragedy by wielding these freshly-made lists and charts. To you, sinus infection, I say we will always wash hands before dinner. And to you, terrorists hiding in the shadows? You'll have to cancel your plans for later in the week, because look what it says right here: we will have tofu and green beans with peanut sauce on Thursday night!

All a mother can do is try, right?

tenderness

Gabriel is three years old, and he has been pondering the mysteries of existence as only a three year old can. His favorite problem to puzzle over is language. "Mama," he asks at least once a day, "why is there a word for everything?" Are there things without words? If it doesn't have a name, is it real? Why do other people know so many words that he doesn't? If he makes up the word can it be a real word for a real thing? Clearly my answers to his questions are wholly unsatisfying, otherwise he wouldn't have to ask me over and over.

He's also been trying out some creative ways to get around death. The unthinkable finality of death is so terrifying and strange that it has no place in his way of thinking. Just today he noticed I'd taken a zinnia out of the little yellow vase in his bedroom. Why did I do it? Well, the flower had died.

"But you said if we put the flower in water it will stay alive!"

"But not forever. Eventually the petals dry out and turn brown."

The lower lip had already begun to tremble, and tears were gathering, making his eyes glitter beautifully. No, no, no, the flower cannot die. There must be a way to ensure forever. I told him we could pick a new one after naptime, which didn't solve the problem by a long shot but kept the tears from spilling over.

I was carrying Gabriel to bed tonight, and his whole body rested heavily in my arms (we both have colds, the consolation for which is fantastic snuggling).

"Can I always carry you like this, even when you're bigger?"

We were sitting in the rocker at this point, and his head was burrowed into my shoulder. He lifted it up to look at me a bit wistfully and say, "Probably not."

"What if I'm the strongest mama?"

"Maybe." We sat quietly for awhile, savoring the still moment before I started our bedtime routine. Then Gabriel looked at me again, his face sharpened into focus with a new idea to share. "Did you know, Mama, that when kids grow up, grown ups turn into kids? They do! Grown ups get small again."

"So when you're all grown up, I'll be a kid?"

He nodded vigorously. "You and Papa will both be kids when Didi and I are grown ups."

"Will you carry me?"

Another emphatic nod, yes. "I will. We'll take care of you and Papa. And then we'll go back again, and we'll be kids, and you'll be grown ups again. That's how it goes, back and forth. Wait and you'll see, Mama."

I didn't say his related thought out loud: and then we'll never die. The four of us will be a family forever, taking turns caring for one another. We'll never have to leave parts of our lives behind; we'll always be able to go back. We snuggled in the chair for a long time, pondering his vision of eternally loving and being loved. Then he looked up again and with an equally bright light in his eyes said, "Mama. I think a hockey stick is just like a polo mallet!"

He's probably dreaming of sports by now, but I'm still thinking about turning into a kid. Should Mike and I be so blessed as to grow old together, so old that we shrink and become like little children, I have no doubt that Gabriel would carry us. I hope we have the grace to let him.

briefly

 Good morning! Today is our third day of school and our fifth day without power. We are slowly but surely getting the hang of first grade, but life without electricity continues to challenge us. Yesterday at pick up time I circled the jammed parking lot and surrounding side streets twice at the Key School, getting increasingly frazzled as the time got later and Gabriel continued to cry because, just woken from his nap, he had dropped the picture of a "football guy" cut out for him from yesterday's sports section and couldn't retrieve it, and so I pulled over in the parking lot, jumped out of the car, tried to ask the nice mustachioed man directing traffic what in the heck I should do so I could get my kid already, and burst into tears instead.

"Are you new?" he asked.

"Yes, I'M NEW," I sobbed, "and I don't know why I'm crying."

Well, we made it through. He was very sweet and helped us. I thanked him this morning at drop off time, then picked up a load of our laundry from our dear friend Milena, who has also been supplying us with extra ice and loads of moral support. I returned home to find a bag of ice left on the porch by another dear friend, Katie. The candles have burned pretty low, and we are appreciating phrases like "the dying of the light" in a whole new way, having lived for a week with the reality of darkness. Once it's dark, it's dark. There's no going back. But it sure is nice to have the unwavering light of friends and neighbors at a time like this.

These pictures were taken during the storm. The children were so tickled with their abilities to put each other into "packages."

Now off to get some work done! Happy new school year and new beginnings to all of you. The reports come in fragments and small details, but overall my impression is that our daughter is already starting to love her new school.