Two days before Christmas I spoke on the phone with a dear friend whose two children are very close in age to ours. We talked at some length about the importance of getting our four-year old boys introduced to the idea of "giving," not necessarily in a religious context, but as part of a family life that emphasizes doing instead of having. I complained that I had not yet given the subject enough thought, and she shared ideas about things she is going to try in the new year.
The day before Christmas, Sava and I drove to downtown Los Altos to pick up some pottery items which he had painted the week before. As we were getting in our car to drive back home, we got accosted by an old lady who asked me, in apparent distress, if I could give her a ride. She explained that she had spent the morning in a cafe, and had been waiting in vain for a taxi, which the cafe owners had called for her, for more than an hour. She said they had lied to her about calling a taxi, and she really needed to get back to her nursing home. While we spoke, the cafe owners came out and explained that they had, indeed, called a taxi, and a white taxi had come, but the old lady had refused to get in it, insisting instead on a yellow one. They were now waiting for a yellow taxi that was expected to come in the next fifteen minutes. The old lady called them "liars" and begged me to take her home. She was dressed in clothes that looked like they had not been washed in a long time, including pants that were unzipped, had a heavy cross around her neck, and generally looked unkempt; but she spoke with a clarity of mind that sharply belied her appearance. I hesitated what to do for a few minutes, weighing the risks of putting a stranger in my car who might be demented and confused about where she lived against the real possibility that this was an old person who simply needed a ride home; her insistence on a yellow taxi sounded a bit crazy, but who is to say what age may do to our hardened perceptions of the world. In the end, I told her to get in, put Sava in his car seat with just a few words of reassurance, and started the car hoping for the best.
I regretted my decision about three minutes later, as the lady made me do a U-turn, claiming that we had missed a right turn, but when I did go back and then followed her impeccable instructions until we ended up in front of a nursing home, I felt like this was a moment that, if I were religious, I would believe had been prearranged by God. As it was, I simply thanked whatever forces are out there which had set up the perfect scenario for introducing my son to the idea of being charitable to those around us.
Sava had sat petrified throughout the whole ride to the nursing home, and when we dropped off the lady and she blessed us, I turned around to confront his worried face. He clearly had been anxious about what was going on, and I used the whole drive home in order to reassure him that what I had done had been not only safe but necessary. I talked about helping people who are older or have less than us. And I reminded him of a lovely book we have been reading for the second year in a row, Jan Brett's Christmas Trolls, which introduces the idea of "giving" at Christmas without any of the holiday's religious associations. Sava didn't say a word, but I have no doubt that every word I said was sinking in.
Then two days ago, we got in the mail the flik flak watch we had ordered for him from the Netherlands, featuring airplanes, which had never arrived due to some postal glitch, and which we had replaced with another flik flak watch, featuring alligators, purchased from a local store. The alligator watch was the one he opened on Christmas day, and the one which gave him more joy than any other Christmas present; it is the watch he had been wearing the past week, proudly telling us the time many times each day. Thankfully, we had told him that the watch was from us, not Santa, and when the lost watch finally made it here, it was not too difficult to explain that the alligator watch had been only a replacement for the airplane watch which we had truly wanted to give him. He was a bit stunned by the story for about ten minutes but, once presented with the choice, said without hesitation that he wanted to wear the airplane watch. We then told him that he had two choices about what to do with the alligator watch: we could either put it away, for some time in the future when he might tire of wearing the airplane watch and decide to swap with the alligators; or, he could give the alligator watch to his best friend Levi, who loves animals and perhaps will enjoy the watch. It took Sava all of about two minutes to say, Mommy, I think I want to give the watch to my best friend, Levi. I told him not to make his decision in haste, but to sleep on it, and tell us the following day, and when I came down for breakfast the next morning, he greeted me with, Mommy, I thought about it and I still want to give the watch to Levi.
While browsing old photos, I came across this picture of Sava and Levi during what must have been one of their first home playdates. They are around 1 year old.
And now...
I don't think that driving the old lady to the nursing home led to Sava deciding to give his watch to Levi. That would be foolish to assume. I think Sava came to us with a personality that is already greatly predisposed to generosity, and I need look no further than his dad to ascertain the genetic link. But I like the idea of giving becoming a motif in our lives. And I like the idea of a four-year old boy who is eager to give his best friend a gift that he could have easily chosen to keep for himself. Like they say in the parenting books, children always have ways of surprising us.
"Mommy, take a picture of my foot! Now take a picture of my hand!"
*****And then there is reading...It's been a while since I've written about new finds in picture books, mostly because there haven't been any absolutely great ones, though there have been a good many decent ones; I just need one truly great picture book to inspire a new post..
We spent a lot of time in December reading Christmas books, several of which I purchased from our library for a buck a pop; we read a few of them in particular ad nausea and, come to find out, Sava has memorized in almost its entirety The Night Before Christmas. Typical him, we had no idea he knew it until I started reciting the book jokingly at dinner last night, and he picked up after the first verse, and recited almost all of the rest of it, giggling and acting all embarrassed. His memory, like the memory of most four-year olds, I suspect, is just phenomenal.
Truly notable is that, at the urging of a friend, we started reading Winnie-the-Pooh. We've only read two chapters so far, and Sava was not enthused about the idea of reading "a chapter book" with scant pictures, which, moreover, he had not chosen himself (we gave him a choice between that and the books of Beatrix Potter), but we have a feeling that secretly he is getting a kick out of it. All three of us read it together in bed after Raya goes to sleep, and tonight he just about died laughing at Pooh calling himself a "Wedged Bear in Great Tightness" when he gets stuck in Rabbit's door. Seriously, we thought he might asphyxiate, and we left him with the light off, still giggling.There is nothing more joyous in my world than a great book.
*****
And then there are board games...This Christmas break with two weeks without school for Sava has been a memorable exercise in fill-in-the-day experiments. Following the sizzle of Christmas anticipation, this week we settled down into a humdrum routine of playing Candy Land and Chutes & Ladders about seventy-six times each day. We thought Sava had outgrown these games, but nope...he is just beginning to acquire the competitive/combative streak that for most kids comes with toddlerhood, and it looks like these games are his way of exploring the satisfaction of coming out on top (and the disappointment of not...). We've been a bit saddened to find out that, when left alone with his grandma, he successfully talks her into letting him circumvent the rules so that he would win, and we've had to intervene numerous times in order to remind him that "everyone plays by the rules," but on the whole it's been a good learning experience for him...and, most importantly, it's been a great way for all of us to spend time together while cooped up indoors by the incessant rain--
At four-and-a-half, he finally allowed me to put some paint on his face...
--the library, and the bookstore, too--
--and we spent a good deal of time just reading books, in what is now officially our last week with grandma--
And then there is Raya, about whom there is so much to be said...On the minus side, though you wouldn't know it from the pictures that follow, her feeding has gotten so impossible that she may be days away from feeding therapy; it is exhausting, dispiriting, and often maddening to spend forty-five minutes feeding her what a "normal" child would eat in about ten minutes; we read, play, sing, switch three kinds of spoons, pretend to be happy when we are not, act silly, you name it...anything to get her to take another bite; she shouts her refusal, turns away, throws stuff on the floor, clamps shut, etc. We've seen it all, and yet she manages to make it just sufficiently different that we feel lost and confused most days. We know it will pass but, from right here in the thick of it, it feels pretty bottomless (excuse the mixed metaphor).
On the plus side, when not eating, she is the most delightful hilarious creature that walks the earth, just like her brother was at this age. She loves to walk up to strangers and shout ai! (hi) in their faces, she greets and good-byes everyone who enters or exits a room, even if she has already seen them a dozen times that day, she wants everyone to watch her when she is doing something new, and will go looking for any of us who might not be present when she has done something for which she expects applause. She loves to imitate, and will repeat any word or gesture that she can figure out how to repeat with some resemblance to the original.
In short, she is a handful--
Sava around 12 months old, after his first haircut.
Raya at 14.5 months old, no haircut.
And going through all those photos had me reminiscing about Sava's toddlerhood, and since this blog was nothing then like what it is today, here are a couple of images that otherwise would gather dust on a CD in the closet--
Also around 12-16 months old.
Happy New Year out there.
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