parenting
The Girl, tucked in bed, is trying to convince me that, despite having trekked down the hall just six minutes ago, she has to go again.
“Tata, I’m lying in bed,” she begins, thrusting her right fist out in front of her. “I’ve been drinking juice,” she continues, thrusting her left fist out as well. They float there, swaying back and forth as if she doesn’t know what she’s going to do with them.
She claps them together, providing an apt conclusion: “When the two halves meet…”
L and I are playing Candy Land. It’s a dry, boring game, to be honest, but I’m not doing it for my own entertainment: that comes from watching her.
Still, I’ve been trying lately to make it a learning experience, as a way to help her deal with her frustration. It’s a simple premise: stack the deck occasionally, placing the Candy Cane Forest card for the next drawing when she’s seventy-five percent complete.
“Oh, rats!” she declares, retreating almost to the beginning of the game board.
I try to make it a little more frustrating, dropping the ice cream cone card into place for my next drawing. Will she get frustrated that she “obviously” has no chance to win? Will she want to stop? Will she complain?
No — nothing but a laugh.
There’s only one thing left to do: make sure she gets a few doubles to catch up — not win, but catch up.
The game takes longer than it would have if we’d just drawn and let chance decide the winner. But the girl has uncanny luck and wins more often than not. A loss or two does the spirit good.
Moving provides the great disadvantage of distanced friendships. Folks we used to see on a regular basis become rare visitors, and vice versa. (The road to Asheville is, after all, two-way.) Still, the advantage of that is the pleasure of spending time with "old" friends.
Time passes so quickly that it's difficult to know when someone goes from "friend" to "old friend." How long do we have to know each other? How quickly can time disappear? Those questions seem somehow connected.
"How long has it been since we last spent time together?" we were trying to decide last night.
Long enough that are children are no longer the children of our memories. L now talks and runs and schemes: a far cry from the toddler our friends last saw. And their son: in my mind, he's still L's age, and then he walks in the door.
He's a school boy now, with new interests and new abilities.
"He wants to learn the guitar," his mother says. We get L's little guitar out and he strums a bit, fingering a note or two, though not quite sure where. At some point, hopefully, L will develop an interest in learning some instrument: hopefully not tuba or drums.
The interest in billiards already exists, but I suspect (from personal longing) that it exists in all children.
There's something almost intoxicating about sixteen fast-moving balls in an enclosed space.
Visiting with children has its risks, though. We let them stay up beyond their bedtimes, knowing that once they go to bed, we'll stay up for another hour or three. The hope is the vain hope of all parents: that by putting off bedtime by an hour and a half, we're somehow magically putting of the wakeup time by the same amount. It never works, and yet we're hopeful each and every time.
And it's a trying situation, no matter which side of the guest/host relationship you're on: if you're the host, you don't want your daughter yelling at a little past seven waking up your guests when everyone has only been in bed a few hours. If you're the guest, you don't want your daughter yelling at a little past seven waking up your hosts when everyone has only been in bed a few hours.
But if you're L, you wake up when you wake up, and a ritual is sacred: there must be chocolate soy milk, warmed in the microwave for thirty seconds, and stirred with a specific spoon. Etiquette has no place in a thirsty girl's thinking.
I was drying off the Girl when she began asking me some rather basic questions.
"Why do we grow up?"
Why indeed? Really, who wants to grow up when a child in the Western world? Still, I thought to continue the conversation: "Why? Don't you want to grow up?"
"Because I don't want to get old and go to work."
A three-day weekend allows us to do things we wouldn't ordinarily do over the weekend. Trips and mini-vacations come to mind on Labor Day weekend, but we elected to stay at home. A hurricane brewing and a coughing daughter made us cancel our plans of camping at the beach, so we did things out of the ordinary.
Like go to Target.
L spent her own money, which Nana and Papa (from whom else would she have received it?) had intended the money for our trip to Polska. She'd received so many gifts -- from friends, family, and a particularly sneaky godmother -- that we simply didn't encourage her to spend it.
Now the encouraging begins. What to buy? So much cash, so many princesses, so little parental support. In the end, she went with Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. The classics.
We finished Saturday at the park, with K and I musing how much she's grown since the first time we went to this neighborhood playground. Saturday she ran wildly, losing sight of us and popping up here and there giggling. Our first visit was cautious: no running without knowing where Mama and Tata are. No climbing without a protective hand on the bottom. No swinging without a toddler swing seat.
The follower has become the leader. "Come on, Mama!" she cried out when we went to the empty baseball field. "Chase me! Catch me!" We can still catch her, but it's not a question of three quick steps and swoosh! she's in our arms.
She's become a moving target, with a sure, steady gait and a strong sense of independence.
As she sat, talking to Nana and Papa, the "I can see her as a tween, as a teen, as an adult" moment washed over me all over again. The independence, the quick feet, the willingness to explore: all these things indicate the inevitable, but we so infrequently notice it.
Sunday, we headed back to the park, but this time, a large state park with a couple of lakes, a few miles of trails, and plenty of rocks for climbing.
And boats.
Blue boats.
Blue glittery boats.
"The only thing that would make this more perfect," I suggested as we neared the paddle boats, "would be for the sparkles to be pink."
"Right!" came the response.
Where did this love of pink come from? Pink is the stereotypical girl color, and we have in fact tried to avoid purchasing pink clothes for her. Yet pink remains the eternal runner-up in the "my favorite color" contest.
The only way to make the day more perfect was a picnic. "A picnic!" L cried. "I'm so happy!"
With a mayonnaise-cheese sandwich (what odd taste little girls can have) and all the watermelon she could eat, she certainly had cause for joy.
The walk that followed somewhat damped that joy. "I want to go home!" was a common refrain,
until we reached a small clearing with plenty of rocks for skipping ("making ducks" in Polish) and general tossing.
As might have been expected, L modified the previous refrain, adding a quick "don't" when we suggested it was time to go.
But we were all tired, and bedtime was approaching. Only the princesses were still on their feet.
L has been dancing whenever she hears music from the time she could stand. At first, it was only rhythmic bouncing with her knees and upper body. As her motor control improved, so did her moves.
So great is her love of motion that she’ll gladly sit and watch others dance. One of her favorite videos to watch is a clip about one young English lady’s ballet instruction, and from the first time she watched, she declared, “I’m a ballerina!”
Now, at close to four years old, she’s finally of the age that we can actually begin to make that reality.
A quick trip to the ballet supply store, a few phone calls, and we have a reluctant ballerina.
L is a cautious girl: she doesn’t just dive into this or that without concern. She is, in short, a worrier. And so on the first day of ballet, though she had been talking about it all week, she fretted that she might not like it after all.
Fear set in, and before long, she was declaring, “I don’t want to go.” No amount of cajoling could convince her.
The Opportunities-We-Never-Had dilemma set in: we never want to force her to participate in anything creative — where’s the joy in that? Yet we knew that if we could just get her there, just let her see the other girls dancing, that all would be well.
Finally, K simply declared that in order to cancel the lessons, L herself had to go with Mama to  cancel the lessons.
She ended up staying.
Saturday morning, before her second lesson, L was all smiles.
The summer’s end nears. Morning temperatures are back in the lower seventies, and we return to eating breakfast on the deck occasionally. Bagels for us all, but the Girl prefers to dip hers in maple syrup. In a sense, it’s hard to argue with that kind of logic.
Here in the south, the end of summer is about the only time we can go outside and play comfortably. In July, it’s still 90 degrees as the sun sets. We try to head out sometimes for a little outdoor time, but no one wants to melt.
Still, there are options. And does it ever bring back memories: a few minutes of running through misted water on a hot summer afternoon was my idea of paradise when I was a kid. A few overlapping garbage bags fastened to the ground with whatever one could find would sometimes serve as a slide, though never for too long. Since we don’t have a sprinkler (they’ve all broken), L has somewhat limited options. It’s more fun for me, though.
The last of the crape myrtle blossoms begin falling.
And in this end is my beginning: a new school year both sparkles and looms.
In the first installment of the Toy Story series, Woody, thinking he’s been left behind, falls to the ground and decries his new, depressing status: “I’m a lost toy!”
Surely there can be many things more terrifying than being lost. One of our great childhood fears is getting lost, being separated from our parents and unable to find them. It’s the stuff of every child’s nightmares, and in a modified way, the plot of great books of the past.
Losing something dear to us is like losing a part of us.
Today, before Mass, somewhere between getting out of the car and walking out of the restroom, L lost her Madeline doll. “She may be teeny tiny, diminutive, petite.” L’s Madeline doll was all those things, and she even had a scar from having her appendectomy.
I walked back to the car, looking for the doll that I thought surely would be easy to find. No such luck. K and L went back to the restroom. No doll. After Mass, I talked to the ushers. Sadly, there’s no lost and found bin anymore, but they informed me that people often leave lost items on the tables outside the sanctuary. No Madeline. We checked the bathroom once more and looked carefully as we went back to the car.
No luck; no Madeline.
Fortunately, L was not terribly attached to the dolls, so a few tears and it was all fine.
But I’m genuinely curious about what happened to that doll. Did someone take it? If so, why? Isn’t it obviously a lost toy? If someone found it in the parking lot, isn’t it a reasonable assumption that the owner will return to look for it? In short, who would simply take a toy when it’s obvious where the owner is? Who would take a doll from a church parking lot?
Perhaps it will show up next week. There’s always that hope — the idealism that led me to be a teacher still says, “Someone will play with it for a week, then return it.”
The first steps usually happen simultaneously: learn the pieces and the layout of the board. The next step: learning how individual pieces move. L's got two of the three done, and she's started on the third, with the most basic: the pawns.
(I might add that L has taken the initiative entirely on this. I'm not some freakish dad pushing his own obsession on his child.)
L’s been sick. As she recovers, we decide to go out for a walk.
Her photographic soul comes alive:
It’s good to see a building interest in something I love. It’s bad for Babcia: she ends up carrying everything L left the house with.
Somehow, I didn’t manage to get the actual pictures she took uploaded. Next time…