Reason 357 Why I Like Children More Than I Like Adults

Today I worked with an eleven-year-old boy for the first time and was reminded, thank god, why I need to keep working with kids. Returning to a recurring theme, there is something just perfect about eleven-year-olds. Too young to be jaded or fresh, old enough to hold a real conversation and have fascinating thoughts and ideas, they are, in my mind, perfection in age.

This one was a particularly charming specimen of the genre. I had been told that he "hated reading" and "lacked focus." (This is code for: he's not doing as well in school as we'd like and balks when assigned Virginia Woolf in fifth grade.) As soon as we sat down at his desk, I noticed that he had all four "Twilight" books in a stack on the floor. "Did you read those?" I asked.

"Oh, yes," he said. The first one I read in one day. I started it, and then I couldn't stop."

"I read it too," I said. He looked at me as though I had sprouted antlers. 

"Really?" he asked.

"Yes," I said. We sat in silence for a moment, my student contemplating his mother's sanity in hiring me, me contemplating the wisdom of full disclosure. And then. In a quiet voice, hesitant but buoyed by conviction, he spoke.

"I loved them. All four of them. And I can't wait for the next one to come out." I smiled. He smiled too. And then, as if scripted, he spoke again, in a whisper, so as not to alert any other members of his family who might be within earshot. "And I don't really hate to read."

"I can see that," I said, resisting to the urge to hug him or grasp his shoulders and shake him, shouting, Holden Caulfield-style, "Don't let the phonies get you!" Or, like Johnny: "Stay gold, Ponyboy! Stay gold!" 

Because that, of course, is the problem with eleven-year-olds, so true, so clean, so honest, so open, so unabashedly, unselfconsciously, deliciously themselves. They turn twelve, and thirteen, and fourteen, and the world, and their parents, and their peers, and their schools, do their damnedest to shake that purity out of them, and they become not teenage zombie drug dealers or drunk drivers or sex addicted derelicts but grown-ups, who care too much what other people think and don't worry about hurting their parents' feelings when they confess their passion for vampire lit and never stay up all night reading under the covers with a flashlight and can't remember what it feels like to know that about some things, all of the rest of the grown-ups are actually wrong. 

Stay gold, my young friend. When it comes to reading, I will do what I can to help.

Drink on This

I have always been a little skeptical of those who say that the sense of smell is the most evocative. Yes, certain smells remind me of, say, my Mormor's kitchen, in a good way, or a hospital room, in a bad one. But as a trigger for memory, smell has never come to close to the other senses for me. What do we call the sensation of swallowing? Touch, I suppose, but that doesn't seem right. 

This afternoon, in an apartment on the Upper West Side, I was asked if I'd like a glass of water. I said yes. When I took a sip, I was momentarily surprised to find the water so cold it was almost hard to swallow the first gulp--as close to ice as water can get without being actually frozen.

And then, I was no longer in this kitchen nook but in a tiny kitchen in a tiny apartment in the woods about thirty years ago, an apartment I could suddenly see as clear as day in my mind's eye. I saw the blue couch in its plastic cover, the lamps with bases like china dolls, the sheen of the coffee table, the blue jar filled with hard candies, the half walnut shell with a picture of me taped inside hanging from the wall on a piece of gold cord, a handmade gift from a ten-year-old girl to her grandmother. How did I get there? It was the water.

A quirk of my grandmother, my father's mother, who died when I was fifteen, is that she only drank water that was extremely cold. She kept it in the refrigerator, which she kept at the coldest setting, and when you asked for a glass of water you got this: that almost numbing sensation followed by the ultimately satisfying quench of thirst, a pleasurable experience, ultimately, so much so that I have always considered frigid water a genuine luxury, on the few occasions I have been served it as cold as hers.

And I could see my grandmother: her red hair, thick and wavy like my father's and my aunt's, cut in short layers and set professionally, the fine lines around her eyes, her "house dress," flowered and to the knee, the veins in her legs, which I have, too. 

It is true that we do not forget those we love. But sometimes it is surprising how and why we remember them. 

Scooby Dooby Doo

Generally I pride myself on being very pragmatic and immune to anything that could be remotely described as woo-woo or unscientific, but the secret truth is that I believe a little, little bit in karma: in the idea that what you throw out to the universe comes back in some unspoken, sometimes incomprehensible way. Of course, the pessimist's definition of karma is: you get what you deserve, but I don't even mind this, as I like the idea, however far-fetched, that goodness breeds goodness, even if the theory offers no explanation for all of the badness that goodness breeds too.

Anyway, that was a rambling and not entirely well-suited introduction for my little story, although maybe it will make more sense when I read it over tomorrow. Today, on our way home from her first day of a week-long camp at her new school, Lily and I rode the subway downtown in the middle of the day, when traffic is light and you can almost always get a seat on one of the benches. We got one, and just a few minutes into the ride a man stepped onto our car with an electric guitar hooked up to some kind of a portable battery, which Lily immediately noticed and was intrigued by. And then, he started to sing. He had a pretty voice, and he didn't sing too loudly, in spite of the electric guitar, which I appreciated. As frequent subway companions, Lily and I have come to an agreement regarding those asking for money below ground, or above. Although the socialist in me wants to give a dollar to every soul who asks me for money, the capitalist--or perhaps the pragmatist--in me, has decided that if somebody is performing, working in some way to earn the money they are asking for, I will give it to them. 

This situation qualified, but for some reason, probably because I was so tired, and so distracted by other things--Lily's experience with all of her future classmates, the afternoon meetings I had stacked one right after the other--I sat tight, even as Lily smiled at the performer, and I too admired his voice. And then, as he walked past us toward the end of the car, Lily looked at me with a question in her eyes, although she didn't ask why I wasn't giving her a dollar, as I usually do, to give to the singer. Quickly, now not sure I even had any cash on me, I rummaged in my wallet and found some, stuffing it in Lily's hand. She jumped up and handed it to the man, who took it with a smile, bowing to her in thanks. By this point he was standing at the door, ready to push through and sing for the next car on the line.

Instead, he turned on his guitar again, strummed an opening chord. "This one is for the little lady," he said, and Lily looked at me, eyes huge, as though she'd just been announced as the winner of an Academy Award. And he played and sang the entire original theme song from Scooby Doo.

After the first bar of music, I recognized it; how could I not after so many early Saturday mornings sunk into the rust-colored couch in my parents' den, eating cereal from the box with my sister, as the gang rode around in the mystery van? And as Lily laughed, I watched pretty much everyone on our subway car realize what he was playing with such reverence and start to smile too, perhaps remembering their own Saturday morning cartoon experiences, or just enjoying the incongruous act, the spontaneous expression of fun.

Karma? Who knows. But a good moment just the same.

Exhaustion

Back from weekend away--which somehow seems like a month. Back on track tomorrow, I promise.

Alone but Not Alone

It's really, really late, and I have had a few glasses of wine, so I am going to keep this brief. The options, in this condition, are either brief, or endless; trust me: I think you will prefer brief. The reason I was able to go out this evening and have a lingering dinner with friends, is because today--for the first day in years--I was without child and without dog, a state I will maintain through Sunday. I am in a wedding this weekend, and because we are going to a very remote part of Connecticut for the wedding, and because the girls are not going to the wedding, my parents took them, and the dogs, to Massachusetts for the next few days. I had big plans for this day--the only day I did not have wedding obligations--and of course I mostly frittered them away. But I will not lie to you: To not have to think about where I was going and when I was coming back and knowing that I was not paying somebody else for the luxury of my solitude was pleasant, maybe even more than that. That being said, I now feel as though I understand the concept of the "phantom limb." Sleep well, girls. I will, I think, but I will dream of you.

Still Swirled

Still circling my subject matter--the end of Lily's preschool years--although I know I am going to hone in eventually. The Watermelon Party was today--this is her preschool's end-of-year celebration. I was reminded, as we sat waiting for the children to come down the stairs and sing for us, that just a few weeks ago in our ongoing series of "Tell Me a Story from When You Were a Little Girl, Mama," I had told Lily, almost offhandedly, about something I hadn't thought about in decades: my own preschool's end-of-the-year celebration.

It's funny that Lily's school celebration is both named after and focused on the consumption of a particular food. Because the only thing I remember about my last day of preschool is the little sundae cups. Do you remember these? I think they're still around, but I haven't seen one since I was five. They come 10 or 12 to a package, I think, in little plastic containers with paper lids. The containers are plastic, I am assuming, because you can see that way whether you are getting the chocolate swirl or the strawberry swirl; I always wanted the strawberry. (My love for chocolate has always been narrow and specific as opposed to all-encompassing.) The cups were eaten with those little flat wooden "spoons." 

My preschool, in the suburb in which I grew up, had a big outdoor space surrounded by a fence, and it was in this yard that we ate the sundae cups. When I had finished describing the cups to Lily, I stopped and looked at her intently, waiting for her to say, "And then?" or maybe, "So?" But she did not. "I can imagine you eating one of those," she said instead. "I would like to try one." And it became clear to me, for the hundredth time, that these stories for her are not about plot or character development or larger meaning but instead about feeling connected to me, to the child I was, like she is now, and about knowing where--in even the most minute and seemingly inconsequential ways--she comes from. 

So even if all Lily remembers is the watermelon, I, now, will remember so much more: the smile she exchanged with the classmate standing next to her on the steps, the way she threw herself into her teacher's arms, the book she pulled out of the red canvas bag, the swirling chaos of the parents in the classroom, the overwhelmed little boy retreating to his cubby, the laughter, the sound of the singing, the moment when, walking down the stairs, she spotted me in my folding chair and very lightly touched her finger to her nose, the symbol we had agreed upon so she could know I was watching. I wonder if my parents remember the sundae cups.

Oh, To Be Royal

Lily is "graduating" from preschool tomorrow, and I am so overwhelmed by my emotions concerning this fact that I can't yet write about it, if that makes any sense. Instead, I turn to the default device of the emotionally overwhelmed and relay an amusing anecdote. And apparently adopt a vaguely British, stilted style that I hope is on its way out with the ending of this sentence.

Tonight at dinner, Lily, who has been doing her darndest to convince me that she is in no way, shape or form ready to go to kindergarten and instead should be shipped off to military school, appeared at the table swathed in a blanket, cradling her stuffed frog, which was wearing a diaper and some kind of a hat. "I am not Lily," she announced. "I am a queen." My parents and grandmother, who had just arrived from Massachusetts, were amused, and Annika looked solemn, as though thinking, "Well, duh. Tell me something I don't know." I rolled my eyes.

"And who's the frog?" 

"It's not a frog. It just looks like one. It is my daughter. The princess." She suddenly started laughing so hard she couldn't speak for a few seconds. "And did you see? She's wearing a diaper!" Ha, ha, I thought. Good one. 

"Your child doesn't look like you at all," I said, knowing on some level that this was the wrong thing to say, and Lily's face immediately darkened. 

"That is not funny, Mama," she said, "and if you--" The look on my face, for once, stopped the sentence in its tracks. "Not funny," she whispered instead to the frog, who, I must say, looked like an ass in his diaper. I carried some dishes into the kitchen. When I returned and sat down, Lily waved her hand in the air, chin held high. "Silence!" she said. "The queen must speak." My mother gave me her version of my previous look, a much more effective version--it seems to lose effectiveness as it is passed down through the generations--and I held my tongue.

"I told you I am the queen. Well, you," and then she pointed squarely at me, "are my servants. Servant?" Again, the finger across the table, directly in line with my forehead. I rolled my eyes again. "You must agree. You are my servant. And that baby over there?" With this she pointed at Annika. "She is my other baby. And that means you are her servant, too."

Suddenly, I felt exhausted. And I wasn't entirely sure she was wrong. 

Excuses, Excuses

Ugh. Blog called on account of children who woke up at 5:00 a.m. this morning and work day that just never ended and a few cooking projects interspersed throughout and a general sense of ineptitude. 

And Another Thing About Annika...

Walking up the stairs behind Annika tonight on our way up to put her to bed, I said to Lily and Ben, "Can you believe she's going to be two in September?" What I was thinking about was the night before she was born. When you have to schedule your baby's delivery, the twenty-four hours beforehand becomes increasingly, almost intolerably, weighty. That night, I could not fall asleep. Hours after my parents, Ben and Lily had retired for the evening, I sat on the reclining chair trying not to think. I "watched" a Law and Order, then about four more. Five minutes later I couldn't remember the plots of any of them. At some point somebody walked down the hall on the way to the bathroom and said to me, "You really ought to go to sleep. Big day tomorrow!" Can you conceive of more of an understatement? And so I sat, in my favorite lavender maternity shirt and my black leggings, my hands on my belly, feeling the baby kick. I kept thinking I wished I could just slow down the passing of time, although each time I looked at the clock it still seemed like forever until the morning would come. I am not ready, I kept thinking, feeling. Seven more hours. Six. Five. Four-and-three-quarters.

And then it was the morning of September 4th, and we said good-bye to everyone, discussed which route to take--Will there be traffic on 10th this early?--and drove ten minutes up the street to experience the second biggest change of my life, which I knew, thanks to modern medicine, would happen at 8 a.m., shortly thereafter, if the doctor had been forced to wait for her coffee. It seemed so strange: so mundane: so earth-shatteringly insane. And then time flew, of course, and at about the time most people were arriving at work, EST, I was holding this baby, this Annika.

I wasn't intending that preamble. What I had in my head when I started was a quirk of Annika's that seems so her own; it was not something Lily ever did, or does, and Annika has been doing it since she could speak. At many points throughout the day, but especially when she is sleepy or in the car or just with me, Annika will become preoccupied with where each member of her family happens to be. "Lily is?" she will ask. "Dada is?" This means, as clear as day and she's been saying it for six months now: Where is Lily? Where is Dada? "Sadie is? Scout is?" she will ask, and even, when I am holding her, or standing at the counter with her at my feet, "Mama is?"

"Mama is right here," I say. "Right here with Annika." She nods solemnly. She knew this all along, but clearly it comforts her. "Annika is?" I say sometimes, just to revel in her response.

"Annika is," she says each time. Annika is." Not a question, but a statement of fact. Yes. She is.

Tooooo Late

Just finished a big work project. I started to write an entry afterward but it was baaaad, and not in the Michael Jackson sense of the word. So although very early on in this experiment I explained that I would not be filtering myself, deleting entries that I had not sufficiently worked over, I apparently lied. I erased. And we are all the better for it. But I will now sleep the righteous if unfairly short sleep of the worthy, and tomorrow, I will, exhausted, begin anew. It's a good thing I'm down with this whole "beginning anew" thing, wouldn't you agree?

Contagious

For a couple of weeks now, Annika has been spontaneously breaking into what Lily and I now call the "Happy Song." This consists of her shaking her shoulders, waving her head from side to side, and singing the words, "Happy, happy, happy!" repeatedly, all while smiling winsomely at her audience. This is one of those "baby book" items (that isn't yet in the still-blank baby book) because it so epitomizes to me who this child is. It also seems relevant to me in a time when happiness is a focus of study for writers, psychologists and sociologists, as well as a key player in the zeitgeist. Americans seem mildly obsessed with happiness these days: What is it, how do we get it, why do we need it, and more. The thing is about Annika, that she just is. And she has been that way from the very beginning: happy. I don't mean to imply that all this fuss about happiness is really pointless because so much of it seems to be a person's birthright, or maybe I do, a little bit. Don't get me wrong. I certainly believe that a person can make themselves more or less happy than they might be by nature, and that circumstance and discipline and sheer awareness can have a major impact on how happy we are. But the fact is, some of us are born singing the "Happy Song." I feel fortunate to have one in my house. 

The End of Something

Lily is always begging me to tell her stories "about when you were a little girl," and I search my reserves of memory for them, telling some again and again--the summer my mother banned Popsicles, the popcorn-induced babysitting fire--and occasionally remembering a new one.  When she says "story" she means a juicy memory, not necessarily one with a plot but with a flash of lightning, burst of flame, satisfying denouement. And if truth be told, these are, in fact, the memories that exist closest to the surface, the easiest ones to recall. But they are not my only memories. They are not even the memories I cherish or hope to hold onto.

No, those are the fleeting, seemingly ordinary scenes, the moments that appear or occur to me unpredictably, with no context or framework, the thoughts or actions that would never be captured in a photograph, or, typically, in words. 

Lily's preschool experience ends next week, and I am thinking all of the time about transitions, about endings. And beginnings, too, of course, but more about the finite nature of experience, and the duration of experience, and endings most of all.  And I found myself one day sitting on a chair in my dining room remembering an afternoon twenty-one years ago, just around this time of year, when I was days away from graduating from high school. I remembered walking through the dining room in my parents' house, catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror that still hangs on the wall, and hardly recognizing myself: a wash of dark hair, a pale profile, a faded navy blue T-shirt that was partly disintegrating even then and is still kicking around today. I remember, quite specifically, thinking the words: This is the metaphorical end of my childhood. And then, sitting in my father's den, on a velvet sofa that is no longer there, thinking: What will happen to me? This is the beginning of my very own life.

I wonder what Lily is thinking. 

Dear

Oh, it is just so, so easy NOT to write. I almost talked myself out of writing right now--was so close I could taste it, or rather feel the pillow under my head. But it is too easy not to write, and that is the problem. The older I get, the more I see how much of writing is discipline, and how much of discipline is learned. I am still learning. I am determined to learn. And so I write. Badly, sometimes. In brief, much of the time. And when I stop, as happened last week, I start again. As Emerson wrote, in a quote I keep by my desk, "Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense." Begone nonsense. Tonight, I write. Tomorrow, I write again. Serene? Not so much. Maybe in a dozen years or so. But begin, yes. That I will do. As many times as it takes to continue from there.

Today I have babies on my mind. No, don't worry mother of mine. Not more for me, but other people's. Or rather, other creatures'. Yesterday two fawns were born in our yard in Connecticut. I will give you the short version of a story I have been telling ad infinitum, to the point that the thought of it exhausts me. One of the babies was left behind when the mother ran off to protect herself and the baby who could already walk, and after a long day of agonizing on the parts of me, the weak and hungry and terrified newborn, and presumably the heartbroken, brave and desperate mother, the fawn was rescued by wildlife rehabilitators: a couple who spend their days answering calls about orphaned infant raccoons and rebuilding turtle shells with fiberglass and treating the broken beaks of vultures. In other words, people who will go to heaven if there is one, people who make me proud to be a human being.

And in the middle of this day, I lay with my own baby, indulgent at her nap time, unable to turn my thoughts from the stricken mother deer, who had no choice but to leave this tiny helpless creature behind, who saved herself and the stronger of her children but instinctively could not risk dying for the other, singing--stroking my own child's hair, and singing in a low, sad voice, praying, in my own way, for the mother to somehow return. 

By the end of the day, she had not. I had doubted she would be able to. So many screaming children, barking dogs, running lawnmowers, ringing phones, starting cars--it was too bright, too loud, too chaotic. I know she was watching from somewhere unseen. Waiting. Or at least biding her time, if I am humanizing the mother too much. But she did not, could not, and we had to leave, could no longer keep the dogs shut up, prevent the rain from falling, keep the infant warm, or fed. And when the rehabilitators came, showed up in a car full of rescued baby raccoons and blankets and carriers and gloves and medication and bandages and food, I had no real choice but to agree with them when they decided to take the baby to a fawn rescue facility, where he would never again see his mother--whom he knew for mere minutes on earth--but would likely, with luck and specialized formula and another one of these human/saints to care for him in his infancy, survive.

And it was not until much later, after a sleepless night spent dreaming of this mother deer, this powerful, daunting creature who had rushed a dog in defense of her own, dreaming of her return to a fawnless site, her agony at the loss, that I connected my actions with hers, that I realized in allowing the fawn to be taken, to be saved, I was obeying my own maternal instincts, that voice that says, no matter what, against all odds, in the face of all adversity: The baby must survive.