When we went to his room at 6:45 am on Election Day, Sava had already been up for a while, had dressed himself, and had drawn the picture below. He was excited to go to the polling station with us and asked to bring along his picture.
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| that's the White House up there |
He's been quite interested in the presidential election, listening intently to NPR coverage (as if he had a choice), asking probing questions, and proselytizing the goodness of Obama. We've given him many explanations of how the political system in the United States works, and we have noticed that--while the broad theoretical discord between Democrats and Republicans may still be lost on him--concrete examples have found a way into his consciousness. He understands, for instance, that Democrats want a government more involved with people's lives, and he has been heard to say, "So, the Democrats are the guys that want to give school lunches to poor kids."
We don't want him to lapse into cliches at an early age, and we'd like him to develop a critical understanding of the political issues that matter, but we figure that complexity will come with time. For now, modeling civic engagement and talking about political choices with practical relevance feels like one way to provide him with what we never had as kids: an awareness that, while individual freedom and individual options matter (for us, they never did), we are, as President Obama put it, "greater than the sum of our individual ambitions" (for us, growing up in Eastern Europe, that was always the "party line," but it was never heartfelt).
We also want him to know that he can be friends with anyone, regardless of political persuasion, and that disagreeing with people is often a reason to like them, not exclude them. It's a subtle message to get across in a country where so many find it hard to relate to the "other side."
Actually, I started telling the story of the first picture above in order to talk about Sava, not politics. Two nights before Election Day, he spent fifteen minutes bawling when we told him it was time to throw out his molding carved pumpkin. He'd been crying for ten minutes when Rado decided, unwisely, to calm him down by putting the pumpkin in a transparent garbage bag. Instead of assuaging his distress, the sight of his pumpkin in a diaphanous body bag upset Sava even more; he begged us to tear the bag and take his picture with the pumpkin before throwing it away. Hence, photo below.
The Obama drawing and the pumpkin photo capture Sava at six-and-a-half better than any words could. Since he was about one year old, I have felt unequal to the task of raising a child whose sensitivity, goodness, and perceptiveness far exceed anything my genes alone could ever have passed on to him. We all know that, except for the stubborn persistence in committing occasional mistakes and then being slow to recognize them as mistakes (aka maternal DNA), he is his good, sensitive, perceptive father through and through. When he cried for that rotten pumpkin, my heart broke. When he showed us the Obama picture, aglow with excitement, my heart sang. When he asked to be a fly-fisherman for Halloween, we recognized that there was nothing else he could have been.
Fly-fishing this summer moved him like nothing in his life ever had; to not have dressed up as a fisherman would have been inauthentic.
Bob did an amazing job of decking him out in real-life gear (some of which also doubles as a Navy Seal) (THANK YOU, Bob), and while I've never cared for Halloween a lot, this year Sava inspired me to see it as something different: a gesture of self-knowledge, not just an act of impersonation.
Speaking of Halloween, here are some other photos from that day. Sister was a butterfly--a bit of a last-minute costume, and not half as inspired as Sava's, but it worked. She especially liked the face-paint part.
Trick-or-treating itself was hilarious. I made videos that are too dark, but the gist of it is that Raya really got into the whole thing (big surprise) and had trouble disengaging from every single door. As the evening wore on, she picked up various phrases that people used with her, so in the end her extended greeting, while grasping for candy, sounded something like this:
Hi!!!!!! Happy Halloween! Thank you! I hope you have a good evening! Bye! Happy Halloween! Thanks!....
and so on. We were laughing with tears.
Back to Sava, just one more story. Last night, Rado stayed home to put them to bed while I went to my favorite Zumba class. Raya was very congested and put up a fight at the idea of having her nose sprayed with the saline mixture, so Rado told her to either calm down or go to bed without reading books. Choosing the latter, she submitted to being put in her crib and and then bawled for fifteen minutes before falling asleep. This morning, after I had left for work, Sava apparently said to Rado:
Tati, I think that not listening to your dad is not as fierce as leaving your sister [he meant daughter] in her crib to fall asleep all alone.
Fierce? That's our kid in one poignant word. Our innermost conscience and our most unforgiving moral critic.
Halloween also involved an annual party with friends who have the stamina and self-discipline to do this every year. Best pictures? Donut-eating contest.
Also, as previous photos suggest, we visited our favorite pumpkin patch at Spina Farms. The kids loved the tractor ride,
and Raya became painfully obsessed with the little train, kicking and screaming at the end of each ride,
I don't want to get ooooffffff!
At home, pumpkin carving was an exercise in patience and bonding for all involved,
and it culminated in silliness for certain participants who did not have the mental endurance to stay focused on scooping out seeds with a giant spoon for more than about ten minutes.
:::
At home, Raya and I have been enjoying slow Tuesdays and Thursdays together, with ne'er anything like a plan when we begin the day. After a smooth beginning of three-mornings-a-week preschool without any protest, she has grown more clingy lately, and I am giving her full control over the days we spend at home. If she wants to sit in her room and play babies all morning, then sit and play babies is what we do. If she wants to take her babies for a walk around the 'hood, then out for a walk we go. The only thing I insist on doing that is part of
my plan is preparing, at some point or other in the day, a slow dinner meal with some of the bounty that comes from our CSAs.
If parenting for six years has taught me anything, it is that children often are far more attuned to
our inner lives than we ourselves are. On days when I am tired, depleted of mental energy, and short on focus--even before I am aware of any of these things--both kids not only sense my distraction but begin to enact it with whimsical protests and seemingly irrational requests.
As soon as I am able to recharge--different things help for this, but turning off all electronic devices, even for a whole day, is a mandatory first step--the air in our household brightens and we are able to tune in to each other.
:::
Speaking of brightening, we just had what must have been one of the warmest, sunniest November Northern California weekends on record, and we spent half of Sunday walking a very slow 1.5 miles at Windy Hill.
This park abounds in rattle-snakes, and we heard from other people that the snakes had been out all week, but we didn't see any ourselves.
Instead, the kids walked slowly and climbed, as usual, every available stump and tree.
Best part? Raya walked the
entire way. Even if walking sometimes looked like this,
and other times involved bribing with "natural cripsy cheddar crackers,"
she walked. Amen.
My favorite part? Gnarly trees stenciled against a bright blue sky,
the size of which never ceases to astound me.
And if anyone knows the name of the tree below, please give a shout.
:::
Stuff They Say
Raya's been asking Rado to not go to work lately--a part, it seems, of the above-mentioned clinginess related to school.
Raya: Tati, why do you need to go to work? I wanna stay with you at home.
Rado: Well, so we can have money for our house, for clothes, for food.
Raya: There is pretend food!
This past weekend, I had to attend our school's open house. A disrupted Saturday morning was not something either kid appreciated. Raya asked why I was going and what open house was, anyway.
Me: Open house is when parents and children who might be interested in attending PW come to visit.
Raya: I want to come! I'm interested!
Now that her birthday is over, Raya is very concerned about when she gets to receive presents again. Someone told her Christmas is coming.
Raya: Mommy, on Christmas you [meaning "a person"] have to get presents, too.
Mom: Well, you get them if you've been good.
Raya: Yeah, I'm good for Christmas!
Rado loved the picture below that Sava brought from school one day; transcribed:
Today we read Which Way to Witch School. If I went to witch school I woud want to learn haw to kil peepl, to fly and do tricks.
The one blogger I read,
dig this chick, wrote some months ago about the s@&t-show that dinner-time at her household with two small kids is. Just when you think everyone has been served and you can sit down and take a bite, someone needs water, another needs ketchup, a third needs a napkin, etc. It never seems to end. Recently, on one such night:
Me to Sava & Raya: Guys, some day when you grow up, I want you to serve me a full meal, so that I do not have to get up a single time.
Sava: Yeah, some day that will happen. Just not today!
Happy hump day, post-election day, out there.
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