matching tracksuits

Monday evenings, we get that rare chance to see the Girl in her element, to see her without her being aware that we see her, that we’re watching. I say “we” but it’s really only one or the other of us: one stays with the Boy, the other takes L to gymnastics, then does a bit of shopping while she bounces about.

I arrived back to pick her up tonight about ten minutes early, so I sneaked to a spot I could watch without her being aware. They were doing something on a bar roughly the width of one of the uneven bars but only about two feet off the ground, placing their hands on the bars and jumping on the bar before extending both arms upward. The Girl completed the exercise, got a high five from her teacher, then went to an aerobic ball and began bouncing up and down on it. The other girls were sitting still, waiting their turn and watching the other girls go, and L was bouncing, bouncing, bouncing, looking here and there, in her own world. They got up to do something else, and when done, L returned to the ball. Bounce bounce bounce. Up down up down up down up down bounce bounce bounce up down up down up down up down up down up down up down up down up down up down up down up down up down up down up down up bounce bounce bounce bounce bounce down up down up down up down up down up down up down up down up down up down up bounce bounce bounce bounce down up down up down up down up down with such abandon and joy that I realized that she could probably just do that during the entire hour and be satisfied with time spent. I thought what a perfect metaphor this simple action, that in some ways I found annoying because I sensed that the other girls around L found it annoying, could cause her so much happiness. It was another of those “just let her be — don’t worry about what other kids think about her” moments. So they might have been annoyed — so what? So they might in some way reject her because they might think that’s childish in some sense — so what?

“You seemed to have a lot of fun bouncing on that ball tonight,” I suggested in the car on the way home.

“Yeah!” she said with her typical excitement.

“Don’t the other girls want to do that?”

“We take turns every week,” she said, looking out the window.

“And tonight was your turn?”

“Yeah — not everyone wants to do it. Some of the girls think the mats are more comfortable.”

I wondered at that. Perhaps some of the other girls just don’t care enough to put up a fight, because I can see L running for the ball to claim the first turn. That’s how she is with us, and with people she feels comfortable with. But these girls? Virtual strangers? I worry at times that she might not have the best social radar, that she might think she’s closer to some people than they themselves think they are to her. I’ve noticed little gestures from others at times, things I wonder if I should point out to L or just let her learn. Reading body language. It’s a skill that sometimes has to be taught, doesn’t it? And then there are those autistic souls who can’t pick up on those things to save their lives.

So no big epiphanies tonight. No big revelations. Just more wondering.

But not about the Boy: he was in perfect E-form when K started cleaning the oven tonight.

The Boy sees me do something, and he starts doing it. He sees K do it, and he starts doing it. He sees L doing it, and he starts doing it.

L has always enjoyed playing store, though in recent years, she really hasn't taken the initiative to play it. When her Polish near-cousins come from the Asheville area, they might play school, and they might, just might, play store, but the oldest is now in middle school and such games seem pointless with just two.

She saw the Boy setting up his store after dinner and desert -- a treat from the Halloween bucket -- and she just had to play. And take over. And start directing the Boy. Playing with her can be so exhausting when she's like that, and I often worry that she might be that way at school as well. She might not have the most friends possible as a result. And part of me wants to do something about that, to guide her a bit. And I have. But nothing has changed, so I've decided to take K's advice and just let it be. It's a lesson she'll have to learn for herself.

One

“You always use that one.” The Girl was downstairs as K worked on our yearly photo calendar and putting finishing touches on the yearbook I create and she polishes (which is not to say she was Polishing it — it remains untranslated this year). Since I was upstairs, I really don’t know what the conversation concerned other than the selection of this or that picture. It occurred to me that she is becoming a vocal and thoughtful member of our family cognitively. Her tastes and her views are no longer merely childish, and entertaining them is no longer simply a matter of being a good and patient parent that encourages a child by simply listening to her. We’ve been through that; we’re going through that with E. Now, she has her own opinions that are not based entirely on childhood fancy.

For instance, she selected the granite that completes our kitchen. It wasn’t just a matter of, “Ooh, this is pink and pretty!” like she might have as a younger child. (The granite is not pink of course.) It was a thoughtful choice that, as I recall, she made with K as they held the sample of the cabinets we’d chosen.

Two

This afternoon I caught a glimpse of another kind of change. We took the kids to see Disney on Ice after lunch, and it was the second time for L. The first time, she was so into Disney and princesses and pink and blue. She sat in rapt attention, almost in awe. There was Peter Pan and the Simba and everyone else she’d watched at Nana’s and Papa’s. Today, the show ended with the inevitable: a long-ish re-telling of Frozen. A couple of years ago, she was obsessed with that, with that music. She marched around Fort Pulaski singing that song, performing it for any passers-by who took the time to stand and watch — and a few did. As the song approached, I was curious what she might do. “Here it comes!” I whispered as Elsa retreated to her winter hideaway. “Here it comes!” And she smiled at me. A polite smile. The song began. I looked over at her again. “Aren’t you going to sing along?” The same polite smile, head cocked a little bit, as if to say, “Daddy, do you think I’m so childish or something?” The thing is, she can still be surprisingly childish, but at that moment, she was fourteen or more.

The Boy’s take on Disney this afternoon can be summed up in three things he said:

1. “I just don’t like pretty things.”
2. “I like vehicles. There were no vehicles.”
3. [Spreading his arms out as far as they could go] “Disney on ice was this long.”

Three

As I’ve spent the last several evenings putting together our annual yearbook, pulling pictures from our photo collection and occasionally taking a bit of text from here — every year, it’s the same: I swear I’m going to make it as the year goes along and then never even begin re-gathering the pictures (and I say re-gathering because I reuse many from here) until late October — I had a conversation with K in whispers as the kids were up having their baths.

“Do you realize that almost all the pictures from this year seem to be of E?”

She nodded in sympathetic agreement. “Well, he is the youngest.” But it just seemed like some kind of favoritism. We agreed that she’d actually been kind of avoiding pictures, not showing the least bit of excitement when the camera came out, even frowning at it occasionally. Foreshadowing the soon-coming day that she actually chides me for putting pictures on the internet. “My friends might find that picture!”

Four

Before the show, we made the requisite restroom stops, and I stood outside the ladies’ room to the side waiting for them. (The Boy still occasionally chooses to go with K — only a little longer before that’s really no longer appropriate. But that’s a different story.) L was the first to emerge, and for a moment, she didn’t see me and merely walked toward my general location. There was a little bounce in her step that made her gait appear a little older, and her hair was lying on her shoulders in that casual way that older girls probably only dream of getting their hair to do — slightly unplanned, slightly messy (perhaps pouting might be the better term), yet certainly not unkempt, just casual — I could see her at fourteen, at fifteen, at twenty.