In my experience, one mark of a great book is that I can't stop thinking about it, and while I long to read something else, I can't find anything that seems satisfying; everything pales in comparison with what I have just read. By that measure, I am still in thrall to Jonathan Franzen's
Freedom. And with the weather unspeakably beautiful (our windows are still open at 8 pm in the middle of November), I've been thinking especially hard about one of Franzen's main characters--Walter--whose preoccupation with overpopulation is one of the dominant themes in the book. Walter's pessimism about the future of the human race, and his anger at the thoughtlessness with which people consume and destroy the earth's resources, throw me into mild fits of despair about six times each day. To make myself feel better, I take my kids outside.
That is how we ended up spending every afternoon in a park this week. It helped that Raya started to boycott her second nap, and instead of staying home and stewing in her overtiredness, we opted for fresh air, yellowing vistas, and the smell of warming earth. It felt eerie, this spring in the middle of winter, but we were thankful for every minute spent running in dirt that is not yet soggy, and getting warmed by a sun that seems to have missed the memo about the change of seasons.
I don't really know how to accomplish it, but I hope to raise kids who appreciate the miracle that is life on this fragile planet. Our daily existence is so cluttered with junk..There is so much
stuff everywhere, and it takes such deliberate effort to focus on the things that really matter: not on what we own, but on how we care for each other and the earth.
I am now fully convinced that kids know instinctively what in life is worth pursuing, and the best we can do as parents is to provide them with opportunities to follow their instincts. When we play at home, Sava is often likely to end up feeling bored: there are only so many lego inventions one can construct, so many pictures one can draw, so many ways one can build a garage out of wooden blocks. Take him outside, and he is
never bored. He'll notice minute details in the landscape, and will find things to play with--sticks, stones, leaves--that keep him engaged far longer than any toy. He will delight in feeling his body gain confidence as he climbs and slides--
--and he will throw leaves in the creek until he figures out what exactly makes the leaf float one way or another.
He will bike, and then he will graciously let his sister try on the bike, with which she is currently obsessed--
--and he will play hide-n-seek with his best buddy, both believing themselves invisible behind their jackets, until they are breathless with stifled giggles--
I love these two photos. I love how they make each other laugh.
In the meantime, she will ride and walk, but mostly walk, because she loves to practice and...today, November 14, she took her very first steps on her own! It was only about a dozen steps, and she did it only once, but hey, it counts. She let go, and she let go fearlessly.
She rocks.
She also swings. Loves to swing.
How many pictures can you take of a baby in a swing?
Answer: many.
And she adores her brother, who adores her in return.
She drove us nutty with her refusal to nap this week, but it was nearly always impossible to be mad at her, when every time we entered her room to release her from the crib, where she had been playing, jumping, screeching, and jabbering, we got to see this face--
She has a truck-load of personality, and it is incredibly hard to be tough with her, when she giggles as we chastise her, and deliberately repeats the very thing to which we just said "no." She is already testing all boundaries, and some. But when it comes to personality, she has some serious competition in her brother, who picked these glasses when he accompanied his dad to the dentist's office earlier this week, and then insisted on wearing them to school; he also painted his face with markers, mascara style--
I think Walter has every reason to feel hopeless about the state of the human race. It will take a new generation of humans, with an exquisite awareness of the fragility of our planet, to save the delicate balance between people and nature that is culture. I hope that we are raising two of these new humans. Hope is the thing with feathers.
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