“I’m going to tweet that!” I proclaimed after my older son did something so very kid-funny.
“No. Don’t tweet that,” my five year old son replied, frowning.
“Oh,” I hesitated. “I guess I won’t then.”
“Mommy would never post anything you don’t want her to,” my husband chimed in.
I almost said, “Well, I didn’t say that.” Instead, I nodded.
“Noooooo!” my older son yells at the screen as a giant seal almost swallows the penguin protagonist of Happy Feet.
“I know it’s scary!” I affirm. “But do you really think they’ll kill off the main character in this type of movie?”
“No,” he admits.
“Trust me. Trust the characters that they’ll get out okay,” I assure him. He sits back down to watch the movie.
I get his fear because I’ve experienced it myself. Like him, I get deeply immersed in fictional worlds, caring about the characters as if they’re people I know.
Beyond stories, I also know that fear of not being able to trust that everything will be okay. How often have I had his “noooo!” in my head, albeit internally? How often have I not trusted the people who surround me to pull off some form of a happy ending for everyone?
36 isn’t what I expected it would be.
When I was 10, I knew I’d have a book published before I was 20. In fact, I expected to be a famous author in the winter and a marine biologist in the summer. I would be so famous that I’d use my maiden name for my writing so I wouldn’t get mobbed when I traveled.
Valentine’s Day as a parent is…
– Watching your kindergartener with pride as he fills out his Valentines by himself
– Buying drugstore candy because you don’t have time to get anything else and know your spouse will like it better than the fancy stuff anyway
– Arguing with a two-year-old in the middle of the night about changing his mysteriously wet pajamas
“Thoughts and prayers for me as I face one of the biggest challenges of parenting (and yes, I’m very lucky I’ve never done it before) – having the kids for the weekend by myself,” I posted on Facebook two weeks ago. For the first time, I had the kids to myself for more than a day.
In the past, my husband Chris, has always been back by dinner. While I’ve gone on several work trips over the years, he’s never gone on a trip on his own. But two weeks ago, he was headed off to Las Vegas to visit his sister and her new baby.
He deserved it. I owed it to him.
I was also scared shitless.
“An 12, huh,” I muttered to myself, looking at my computer screen. I had just taken the “Are You a Sensation Seeker?” self-assessment on the Highly Sensitive Child website. I finally had a word to put to something I’ve known for a long time about myself. And more importantly, I also had a word for something I realized much more recently about my older son.
“Back in my day, kids roamed the neighborhood without supervision and nobody had these fancy birthday parties,” says yet another article about how childhood was different “back then.” While the world has changed for the good and the bad, I feel like my children’s experience isn’t all that different in some ways than mine or even my mom’s. Looking forward, it’s different in so many good ways as well.
No, it’s not a gate fence!” I giggled. As we drove to one of our favorite yearly events, the Maryland Renaissance Faire, we passed the time playing Twenty Questions. It had taken a turn towards the silly, with my then four-year-old guessing the animal I was thinking of was a fence. Even though we were stuck in traffic, we were all laughing hysterically. While the Faire itself was great fun, that half-hour playing 20 Questions is what I remember the most.
Peering through a plexiglass wall, I held my two-year-old steady as he stood on a narrow ledge.
Ten minutes earlier, we had been on the other side of that plexiglass wall, on the ice of our town’s outdoors skating rink. Unsteady on my own skates, I held his left hand while his right hand gripped the wall. His feet flailed beneath him, slipping backwards, then forwards.
“I was such a rule follower! What happened?” I said to my husband after my kids once again ignored my directions and ran away laughing.
While they follow directions pretty well in school, I know I’m not the only one their anti-authoritarian streak comes out around. My mom has given them The Look she perfected after decades of teaching. They shrug it off. If you start counting without a very specific consequence attached to it, they just look at you, wondering what the point of this counting is. Authority for authority’s sake does not resonate for my children.