“Hey, does anyone want to go down to the creek?” I asked my kids, who were sprinting across the sprawling playground equipment at a local park.
“No, we’re racing,” my older son replied.
“Well, I want to go down to the creek,” I said, with a hint of whine in my voice.
“You can,” he stated, plain as day.
“That’s true, I can!” The fact that they could play on their own, that they were big enough not to be constantly supervised and could come get me if there was a problem popped into my head like a cartoon lightbulb.
“You should be so available to play that your children never need to ask,” read the meme. Or least that’s how I read it. (Although it really was close to it.) But what if they always want more than I have to offer? I thought in desperation.
Other memes or oversimplified advice extolled the virtues of connection, especially when it came to getting your kids to do what you want or need them to do, like brush their teeth or come to the table for dinner. Some even made the connection explicit, saying that your kids will be cooperative if only you’re connected enough with them. Of course that message implies the opposite – that if they aren’t cooperative, it’s because you aren’t connected enough.
“Baby Yoda left,” my older son told me as I was tucking him in. He was referring to our Baby Yoda Tamagotchi, which eventually leaves with the Mandalorian if you take good care of him.
“Oh?” I said.
“Yeah, I looked to see how Baby Yoda was feeling and he was gone. And I was like, Oh, that’s how he’s feeling,” he said.
“Mmmm, well, you know something?” I whispered to him. “That’s how it feels to me with you.”
1958? Wow, I didn’t think this book was that old, I thought as I looked at the title page of the classic children’s book Beezus and Ramona. Ramona’s four year old behavior – eating one bite out of each apple in a bag, writing her name on every page of a library book – seems just as relevant 65 years later as it did then.
“Nothing is wasted in nature,” I whispered to myself as I dumped moldy strawberries in our composter.
I despise wasting food. There are so many things wrapped up in the production of our food – from how farm workers are treated to the amount of fertilizer used – that throwing it away feels a bit like sacrilege. But we bought far too much for our Christmas fruit salad and the extra got shoved back in the fridge with the other holiday leftovers. So into the composter it had to go.
I at least had the solace that this food wouldn’t be wasted – it would break down into good compost to feed our garden next fall. Just like the fallen leaves in the forest feed the insects and fungus, which in turn feed the roots of the trees and other plants.
In fact, this is idea that nothing is wasted in nature is a mantra I’ve been trying to adopt in life far beyond our composter.
As I pumped my legs and leaned back in the swing, I noticed my younger son swinging next to me, in parallel, our swings moving in time together.
A memory of swinging as a kid flashed across my mind – the idea that if you swing in sync with someone else, it meant you would get married. I smiled. That saying was nonsense of course, mere playground silliness. But to see this being, the child who I remember being so small, swinging on his own, next to me, reminded me of our deep connection to one another.
Side-by-side, my kids working together – I paused for a moment and gazed in wonder.
That afternoon, we had been preparing the garden for winter. Each fall, after we’ve pulled out all of our plants, we pile up compost, straw, and leaves to build the soil, mimicking what happens in the forest. This year, we had an addition to the process. When we ordered our seeds in the spring, my younger son spotted a plant in the catalog named for his favorite animal – elephant garlic. As we were also ordering carrots because they’re associated with my older son’s favorite animal (rabbits), we just had to get it.
So while I shoveled compost, I gave my kids the task of planting the garlic. My older son was (justifiably) complaining about the smell of the compost and loves picking things apart, so peeling the garlic was a perfect task for him. Once that was done, they needed to work together to plant it. I pointed out that it might be best for my older son to measure out where to put the cloves – elephant garlic needs a ton of space – as he has experience from math class at measuring things. Then my younger son could dig the holes, drop in the cloves, and cover them up.
“You know, you’re lucky. They used to burn stuffed animals when kids got sick,” I said, pulling my older son’s stuffed rabbit out of the washing machine. “You just had to go through the laundry.” Despite that, I still felt bad for the poor, bedraggled thing.
The white board hangs on our basement wall, rather disused. A few letter magnets – an A there, a D there – hang on it, along with a mess of adorable Where the Wild Things Are magnets. In bulletin board letters, the words “Question – Imagine – Wonder – Explore“ posted around it declare its purpose – to inspire questions and inquiry. But while it seems unused, its appearance belies its real impact.
