Revisited

After that last post... I got many calls and comments - Facebook messages - reminding me not to be hard on myself. To cut a break. And I do. I really do. I have a fiery temper, and I am not exempt from its wrath. It is quick, though. And after the explosion, I forgive. I soothe, when necessary (and it is! When you breathe fire, there is always a lot of cleaning up after yourself later.)

I AM good at some things, and was reminded of them that same night. Late. Through the quiet. By my husband. Who I love and lean on 14 years after picking.

And the next day, yesterday, worked. Annabeth and I made cookies for her class, put an initial for each child on the front in proper preppy sorority girl lower case. There were polka dots and little cellophane bags. She wrote beautiful thank you notes for last week's birthday. On her own. Taking careful time to say the right things to convey specific gratitude. She practiced her spelling words without a complaint, taught her little brother to spell "people."

They are mostly a humble bunch, a generous bunch. They are loving, warm, affectionate. They are considerate and compassionate. They are boisterous and loud. And they are, mostly, contributors.

Patrick has forgiven me completely. I forgot the right kid that time - either of the other two might have seemed more wounded. They would have put a lot of effort into making me feel OK about it, but they would be a little sad. pPod just seemed glad to see me. He really liked his balloon, and later showed me how the big bad wolf roars.

Hours after dinner last night, Patrick threw up all in his bed. It was close to midnight, and we got him up, washed the sheets, got him in the shower and tucked him in between us. Gavin and I fell asleep to him chattering away.

This morning he had a fever, so he stayed home. Three days left of school, and he is missing one of them. He was warm and extra affectionate, laying half on me in front of morning TV. We watched Little Bill and I felt all nostalgic. I didn't realize how much I missed Lil Bill, Bobby, Alice the Great. The sweet morals slowly played out.

In my real world, where things aren't resolved in twenty minutes, there are still far more gentle spots and joyful spots and segments of lessons learned, as well as subtler daily bits that remind us what good kids we have than there is chaos, and the regrettable (though maybe not infrequent) shouting.

My thinker, Sebastian, needs someone to indulge him when it's close to midnight and he appears with some Big Question. (Why is there suffering? How do I know the world won't be destroyed while I am alive? Why doesn't God answer my prayers to have Bonus (the long-dead cat) visit me as an angel in my dreams? Will we ever move again?) He needs us to occasionally ignore the book light shining on in those same hours close to midnight. He needs to be reminded of other's expectations, and to be appropriately lauded when he shines.

My artist, Annabeth, re-imagines every piece of junk as a future craft - "don't throw that away! I can use it!" She executes craft projects with me and is still thrilled to have me at her side, doing my thing. It hurts me when she is hyper-critical of her own efforts, especially doing this thing she does best of all. (yes! Tarra, Heidi, Kymmie, Agatha, Becca, David... you are right - I think she gets it from me. And I should be gentler on my own Me.)

My actor-future-fiction-writer- man-of-action, Patrick wants attention - someone to make laugh and help him weave his elaborate stories, to encourage him to accessorize, to roar, to give tiger hugs and after baths, to let him ball up under a towel in the middle of the room and "crack out" of his dinosaur egg - to welcome that dinosaur enthusiastically, but with a little fear.

And I do all that. With a willing, engaged Big One. And we do it well.

And sometimes, I even bake cookies.

Exclusive

Hmm.

1. My son, age four, has been given homework this week. Create a diorama. He is four.

2. There is a debate in schools that keeps surfacing about removing soft drinks, or the rights to sell soft drinks in schools. The 'right' to buy them, and drink them.

3. I learned today - from a friend who knows this well - that it is possible, in some markets, to pay $1000 to enroll your 10-year-old in a single-season sports league.

These are related only in that they all seem to create the same 'whattheheck?' impulse in me. A little repellent, a lot confused. Generally, I don't know how we got here. Specifically, none of it seems it should possibly be relevant to me. And yet, that I am close enough to know of it - or to feel it first-hand, means it is.

I guess my questions are the acceptable part of my back-brain-hosted rant that I don't quite feel like putting out there in its entirety, given what my husband does for a living, given that my name is all over this blog. Given that recent blog-world events remind us that there is no anonymity, anyway.

But, seriously, people.

What happened?

I think the unspoken stuff is all about privilege. About the aching sense that if these things were going on when I was the ages of my kids - they would have been dividing things. Things that made a knot in the pit of my stomach - things I couldn't have.

I can see the eight-year-old me, and the single-income mom that was Mom. And I can see being so left out. And I wince. And I wonder what the point of all of this is - and I puzzle over who we are serving.

I have the time to work on the diorama with my son. We will do this, and it will be fun of sorts. He will be proud. And it will require a trip to the craft store for the kind of glue that can stick three-dimensional objects. And Annabeth and I will do most of the work. And pPod will gobble up the attention. And I will still wonder why practicing his letters, or looking at a color wheel, or counting plastic bears... isn't enough for the second week of school.

I will withhold opinion on the soft drink debate - because it is the school's issue, because no one asked me, and because what tiny retirement I have is partly bundled tidily in Coke stock. It isn't directly applicable to my children because it is a privilege specifically for high school kids - but if it were, they would only be buying with money they earned. At least I imagine that to be the case. Except on the occasions when I would surely relent, and hand them each a dollar.

How did we ever consent to Pepsi machines in schools? Were schools that hard up for money? (Yes, we were.) Are soft drink companies that opportunistic? (Yes, they are.) Are our children so indulged that they cannot go to school for six hours without a pop? (Apparently, again, yes.)

And as for sports... my three will be in less-expensive sports leagues - but they will play and I will pay. For their 7-year-old and 9-year-old selves to 'get in the game' now. So they are 'ready.' I will hesitate - at least one more season - from putting my littlest in anything. But the time will come - likely sooner than I can really rationalize.

Which is to say, I will participate in the madness every step. I will participate, and perpetuate and it will grow a little more. And some of it will create that same cognitive dissonance - the sense that I believe this... and still, sometimes begrudgingly, DO that.

And I will continue to fantasize about raising my children on a non-existent remote and kind island. Where their toys are sticks and coconuts, their education is the tides and home-hewn repairs to thatched roofs. Where friends are like-hutted, and everyone gathers to cheer on the Coke truck - when it comes... only rarely (and never delivering to the one-room schoolhouse).