It's been raining the past two days, and apparently people are referring to the cold spell we've had around here for the last couple of weeks as Junuary.
We like Junuary.
It's nice not to worry about sunscreen when we venture out, and nice to enjoy the rare bursts of sunshine without having to put on sunhats because, hey, everyone needs that daily dose of Nature's Own Local Vitamin D. The skies remind of Montana, and the smells make us wish we didn't have to go home for nap.
It's also nice to be able to visit the open spaces midday that, midsummer, would be too hot for people big and small. Our family is eager to breathe the fresh air after weeks of intermittent sickness. I love that we can drive ten minutes and be in the midst of this.
The kids relax, and the parents imagine a future in which we do this for hours, rather than just an hour and a half.
Sava saw several butterflies during our walk, and at his insistence, we bought butterfly nets in the afternoon, and went out again, this time to a garden, to look for butterflies. Butterflies there were none, probably because too late in the day, and already chilly, but he filled his net with fallen petals which now float in a giant bowl. I can't get over how much he loves and appreciates flowers.
I can't get over a few things about him this week.
At dinner three days ago, apropos of nothing, the following conversation:
Sava: Tati, can you talk while you are falling down when someone is killing you?
Rado: Umm...it depends, sweetheart. Why do you ask?
Sava: I don't know...So you can say "Goodbye, I'm dying."
He did go on a field trip to the police station with his preschool earlier this week, and the cops apparently showed them guns, which Sava reported as hugely impressive. But worrying about having time to say goodbye as one is dying?...
Then at lunch yesterday, we were listening to This American Life, which had a show on about psychopaths. They were interviewing some "reformed" psychopath from a prison in Vacaville, CA, who said at one point, "I'm not proud of my life. I've hurt other people. I've disappointed myself." Sava was eating a quesadilla, leafing through an Italian edition of Pinocchio, and I could have sworn he was not listening, but when he heard that, it took him a split second to say, "I don't know how he's disappointed himself."
I choked on my quesadilla.
Then Rado and I fumbled to explain how one might disappoint oneself in life. Ahem.
I know he often thinks thoughts that seem slightly age-inappropriate for a five-year old. He doesn't always voice them, and we don't always hear them when he does voice them, because, I find, it is hard to listen to everything your kids say in the course of a long day. They talk a lot. As in, a lot.
But I've been especially attuned to everything the kids have been saying this past week because I've been over-thinking this whole parenting gig again, probably under the influence of books (what's new?). I finished reading Peggy Orenstein's Cinderella Ate My Daughter, which reminded me, as Orenstein puts it in the title of her first chapter, "Why I hoped for a boy," and made me want to throw out all of Raya's pink hand-me-down clothes and take her to the mountains of Bulgaria where she would stay blissfully oblivious of American/Western/Global popular culture until she is, oh, about twenty-five years old. I am also in the middle of Hold on to Your Kids by Gordon Neufeld and Gabore Mate, which puts a wrench in pretty much every assumption of the parents with whose kids my own kids will go to school and in many tenets that I myself have been tempted to adopt since Sava's birth, such as fostering independence, prioritizing socialization as a child's most valuable skill, and a few others. (The book is badly written and hard to slog through, so beware.)
It doesn't help that I have found it increasingly hard of late to officiate at playdates with other children where parents assume that five-year olds can take care of themselves and need zero supervision, while I struggle to justify intervening when one preschooler is goading another to do something that is either silly or unsafe or both.
I find that even the most intuitive and well-meaning five-year olds fall easy prey to the influence of peers, and it is sometimes necessary to stake out boundaries that are not self-evident to said five-year olds. If that makes me old-fashioned or conservative, then I am, it seems, alright with that.
The point is, I've been thinking about my job.
If I am home with my kids all or some of the day, and I take them to the park, and I eat lunch with them, and I put them for nap, and I read with them, and I watch them engage with each other, and I encourage them to do certain things but discourage them from others, what, if any, is the ultimate objective?...
I don't like saying that I have the answer to something, because I don't think I have the answer to anything, except this...Because, really, people change, opinions change, but I sure as hell hope that my answer to this one question will not change.
My job is to raise good people--not smart, not successful, not athletic, not musical, not whatever else I might imagine them becoming--and it's a job whose requirements change daily. Much of kids' personalities comes already mixed, as one of those prepackaged seasonings that you add to meat and, voila, you've got yourself a taco, but much is also both unpredictable and vulnerable. These days, I find that paying attention to what my kids think and say teaches me all I need to know about how they need to be parented. No parenting manual, the stack of books on my night-stand notwithstanding, can substitute for the sustained focus that is the hardest part of parenting.
It pays off to heed Sava's concerns about dying or failing to live up to one's own expectations, and then to talk, first thing in the morning, about his fear of starting Kindergarten in a month.
It's good to repeat twelve times per Raya's request, "Sava puts toothpaste on his toothbrush. Mommy puts toothpaste on her toothbrush. Tati puts toothpaste on his toothbrush. Raya puts only water on her toothbrush because she is small," and then to listen to her repeat the same.
It's proper to tell Raya not to hit her brother with the butterfly net, and to caution him against throwing her against the sides of the playpen when they wrestle in there before dinner (but truthfully, I refuse to look at what goes on in the playpen because it freaks me out, and Rado is finally taking my advice, too, after nearly having twelve heart attacks).
Witnessing the making of real people is such a privilege, and the burden of having to not only witness but be in charge can sometimes overwhelm. What makes it all worth it is getting the hard questions and having to answer them, knowing that, right in front of your very eyes, these kids are making the transition to moral adulthood. A slow transition, but awe-inspiring nonetheless.
everyone making "sad duck" face
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