Tag Archives: children

Your Children Are Not Your Children

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I had three encounters today that brought to mind these words from Lebanese poet and artist, Kahlil Gibran:

On Children
by Kahlil Gibran

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Khalil Gibran at the age of 15. Photograph by Fred Holland Day, c. 1898.

Khalil Gibran at the age of 15. Photograph by Fred Holland Day, c. 1898.

Vivi, Away

We went through this together last year, right? Vivi being away at camp during her birthday week? Me not being able to make a fuss over her, all that rigamarole. I’ve been doing a lot better this year. Even when I miss her, I know she is safe and enjoying herself. I’ve had very few moments of panic that she might be curled up under her bed in the tent, crying because no one has told her that they love her that day. I’m cool…really.

But it’s been FOUR DAYS and I had yet to see a photo of her posted in the nightly album of scenes from the day. On the first night, I was slightly alarmed at this picture of my firstborn standing in the center of a pack of somber girls:

They're either learning how to raise the flag or acting out Lord of the Flies.

They’re either learning how to raise the flag or acting out Lord of the Flies.

Then today I made a teensy request (with only a touch of hysteria), because it’s her birthday, for a photo of my girl. The camp director replied “We’re on it!” and soon I was holding back tears at the sight of this beautiful creature:

Love many, trust few, and always paddle your own canoe.

Love many, trust few, and always paddle your own canoe.

Who is this woodland spirit? This daughter of Life’s longing for itself, she reminds me every day that “life goes not backwards.” I may spend today thinking back to the moment she was born, how Daddy reassured me “She’s pinking up real nice” when her Apgar score wasn’t so hot the first time. For me, this day is about then. For her, it’s about TODAY–a crown made from pipe cleaners, a cake to share with her unit, a care package filled with books and glow sticks and confetti eggs. She spent today learning to paddle her own canoe, discovering who she is today and getting ready for who she’ll be tomorrow.

Dancing with Jack

“You want to hop out at the door or do you want me to walk in with you?”

“Walk wif me.”

Carlos is at Extra Special People camp this week, and even though he is comfortable and knows from last summer that it’s a fun place, he still needs a hand to hold when we first walk in.

The first activity of the day at ESP is “Flag.” All campers gather around on the lawn to sing, dance, and brag on each other. It’s pretty loud for Carlos, so he hangs back around the periphery with his coach. I tried to coax him up to the circle, and he managed it for a while, but he kept floating back to the shelter of the sidewalk.

Then along came Jack. I know his mother from work, so I know all about Jack but he doesn’t know me. Jack is autistic and doesn’t speak. He’s not a big fan of shoes, but he does like hugs. His shirt today said, “THUG LIFE – drop the T and get over here!” Jack likes to stay on the move during Flag, so his coach was following close behind him to make sure he was safe.

Jack walked past me, just a few inches away, and I reflexively leaned down to his eye level and said, “Hey, Jack!” As soon as I said it, I thought, “Oh, that’s right…Jack doesn’t talk,” and I scrambled to think of how to communicate with him since talking is kind of my thing. But before I could chase my rabbit too far, Jack looked me right in the eye for a moment and smiled. I stuck out my hand for a high five and got two. Then two more, then low fives, then middle fives, then around the side fives and pretty soon we were both giggling. Then I got a hug from Jack and my heart cracked wide open.

His bare foot scraped across my shoe and caught his attention. Jack turned himself around then carefully put his feet on top of my feet so that we could move together. He offered me his hands and I slowly began to turn in small steps, making a circle in the cool early morning grass. We danced for a little while then Jack went on his way.

I had assumed that I wouldn’t know how to talk to Jack because he wouldn’t talk back to me. But we figured it out when Jack showed me the way–start with love then take little steps from there. “You may give them your love, but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts…You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.”

Thank you, Jack, for reminding me how to make a friend without using any words.

Twilight Rockets

End of the day fatigue led to a parenting mistake: I opened a box from Amazon in front of Carlos without remembering what was in it. Along with a Brandi Carlisle CD for me, I had ordered some Rocket Copters with the aim of taking them to the beach. They’re little plastic darts with wings and LED lights that you launch from a slingshot. They sail 120 feet in the air, spinning/blinking/whistling then plummet down to land on your roof or a nearby tree. Hence my aim to keep them a secret until we were at the beach and had a wide open space.

“Can we do them now, Mama?”

“We have to wait until dark.”

“Is dark now, Mama? When’s dark? Is dark after dinner or after bath? Is dark at bedtime or book time? Is dark now, Mama? How about now?”

I was so tired and so not wanting to have to put on bug spray and shoes to shoot a stupid rocket ONCE before I had to dig out the ladder to climb up on the roof. I hid the rockets in my room in hopes that he would forget about them.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA…RIGHT.

After bath time and before book time, with his wet hair slicked down like Rudolph Valentino, Carlos came into the den and chirped, “Is it dark now, Mama?”

Dark enough, Baby.

We went out to the deck and I shot the first one straight up…and into the pool. While I went downstairs to fish it out (with the LED light still blinking, so these are actually pretty sturdy little toys), G shot the second one…onto the roof.

I stayed down by the water to rescue any that came my way and G stayed on the deck with Carlos to fetch the ones that hit the roof. For a good 10 minutes as night fell around us and the bats flitted through the graying sky, we shrieked and squealed and laughed. After a few duds, Carlos eventually figured out the magic of a slingshot, how the power is in both the hand that holds steady and the hand that pulls back.

Each needs the other to work. “You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.” All this bending that we have to do as parents, it’s so that our children can fly strong and true to the horizon.

Let our bending be for gladness.

carlos tribal summer esp

Moving On

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After Richard died and left our house to me in his will, many people assumed that I would be selling it.  As one friend put it, “It will be easier for you to move on with your life if you’re not still in this place.”

I didn’t want to give up our house.  Yes, it was too big for just me.  Yes, it was a lot to maintain on my own.  Yes, every corner and crook held a memory of our time together there.  But I didn’t want to give up my house.  One blazing hot July afternoon, I came home to an HVAC unit that had been struck by lightning, a green pool, and a leak in the basement.  I stomped around cussing and pouring chemicals and mopping and panicking.  I didn’t want to let myself start crying because I wasn’t sure how I would stop.  I remember glaring up at the brick face of the house as I turned the hose on and shaking my fist at it.  To be so huge, it was hugely empty–just me and three dachshunds.  That night, as I watched the Atlanta news and ate my dinner all alone in the den, the anchor introduced a story about kids who needed to be adopted.  Three siblings who hoped to stay together.  It’s hard to find a house with that much empty space–but I had one.  A part of my wretched heart opened up at that story because it dawned on me that maybe the house would give me options down the road that I wouldn’t have otherwise.  Like any gift, my house held possibilities.

kids

One of the dearest things about Richard’s gift to me is that he knew how much owning a home meant to me.  He had grown up with a home–his parents lived in the same house from the time he was in elementary school until after he was out of college.  He loved the little yellow house so much that he was furious when the next owners cut down “his” azaleas.  My childhood memories were scattered over several places–the trailer in Greenville, the brown house in Hollonville, the old plantation house, the tin-roofed house on the Circle.  By the time I was an adult, neither my mom nor my dad lived in a place where I had ever had a room of my own.  I didn’t have a childhood home to go back to.  Fartbuster and I had bought a house together, but it never felt like a place to put down roots.  I didn’t know any of my neighbors there…or my husband, for that matter.  When we divorced, I felt like I was being forced into the decision to sell.  I rented two more places on my own before Richard and I bought our house.  After he left it to me, I had a place I would never have to leave unless it was my choice.  So I chose to stay.

Within five years, all the bedrooms were full with three siblings.  Not those sweet kids from the evening news–my kids.  Yesterday, two of them and I were playing in the backyard when I witnessed something that taught me a new lesson about moving on.

The very idea of “moving on” is an illusion.  We put together our lives not by moving away from the past, but by integrating the past into the present and the future, regardless of where we might be.

bluebirdI’ve told the story before about the bluebird who appeared at our backyard wedding (A Tuesday Kind of Miracle).  Well, yesterday, as I sat in the sun and watched Vivi and Carlos playing in her wagon, a pair of bluebirds flitted out of the forsythia bushes on the far side of  the yard.  I thought I was seeing things.  One perched on the fence down by the river–in the exact spot where the wedding bluebird had sat almost nine years ago.  As I was marveling at the beauty of the bluebird–and the memory I associate with them–Carlos caught my eye and chirped, “Hello, Mommy!”  Time collapsed in my backyard as my son stood in the same place Richard and I had stood to say our vows, and called me by my new name.  Mommy.

If I had sold this house and moved in to a new place, I would have missed that moment.  I would have missed seeing my Now blend so seamlessly with my Then.  As I sat there being happy, it dawned on me that that is what HOME is–being somewhere long enough that stories have time to come back around.

Be Good For Something

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This quote from Henry David Thoreau inspired my column today at Work It, Mom:

thoreau

The story is called “The How, When and WHY of Work: Fostering a Healthy Work Ethic In Our Children.”  Here’s an excerpt:

A few years back, my father hired a teenage boy to be an afternoon kennel assistant at his veterinary clinic.  Cleaning cages, feeding the animals, tidying up–a job of all work.  Mopping kennels at a vet clinic doesn’t require a tie, but this kid always showed up to work with his jeans sagging down off his butt.  Every time he stooped over to put a bowl of water on the floor, he had to adjust his pants.  While he stocked shelves or swept the exam rooms, he was constantly hiking his pants up or pulling them down to keep them in just the right spot.

This drove my dad NUTS.  So he, as the business owner and boss, told the kid, “Those pants are interfering with your work.  Either wear a belt tomorrow or don’t come in at all.”  The kid got huffy and replied, “I don’t have to put up with this sh*t!”
 
Which led to much laughing from the actual adults who worked there.  Gina, the lead tech snorted, “Oh, yes, sweetheart–YOU DO have to put up with this sh*t!” 
So click on over and find out what happened!

Playing Telephone

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play phoneHow about a silly story that has nothing to do with Christmas?

When my nephew, Jackson, was about two, Brett dropped him off at Nana’s house for the afternoon.  Jackson’s diaper was riding low.  Brett said, “I’ve tried everything short of tying him down but he will NOT let me change that diaper.  See if you can get him to cooperate.”

After a while at Nana’s, Jackson pulled a yellow plastic phone out of the toy box.  Nana acted all excited and said, “Jackson!  I have a great idea!  Let’s call your daddy and talk to him about that diaper!”

So Nana pretended to dial the plastic phone.  She waited for it to ring and for someone to pick up…all the while Jackson was giggling and wiggling at their silly game.  Then Nana said:

“Hey!  Could I speak to Jackson’s Daddy?  Why yes, I’ll hold”…….”Hey!  I hate to bother you at work, but I need a little help.  Jackson has a wet diaper and he doesn’t want me to change it.  Would you talk to him and tell him that we need to change that diaper?”

Jackson hung on every word that Nana spoke into the yellow plastic phone.

She went on:

“OK, so you’ll talk to him for me?  Good!  Let me put Jackson on the phone.”

She handed the baby the phone.  Like a pro, Jackson stuck the phone between his ear and shoulder and began pacing back and forth across the floor.  He listened carefully to the imaginary voice on the other end of the line.  He nodded his head and said, “Uh huh.  Uh huh.  OK.”

Then he handed the phone back to Nana and said, “Daddy said NOT to change my diaper.”

Well, okey dokey then.

phone

The Stuff That Comes Out of My Mouth

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wdyaParenting Pop Quiz – December 16th

Which of the following statements did I utter this weekend?

A.  “Please wash the poo off the bottom of the minivan.”

B.  “Grab the Dustbuster.  He just poured half a cup of powdered garlic down his diaper.”

C.  “Get your foot out of the popcorn.”

D.  All of the above.

I guess it’s lucky that only one was said to G.

What Is This Word?

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Child with a Dove, Pablo Picasso, 1901

Child with a Dove, Pablo Picasso, 1901

I try to do at least one New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle per week.  After Richard died, his mother left a half-complete collection of NYT puzzles at our house.  I asked her if she wanted me to mail it to her and she said, “No.  I did so many in the hospital these last few months that I don’t think I ever want to do one again.”  So I picked up her book and finished it.  Then I bought another one and another one.  There are 200 in each collection–now that I have kids, one book can last me over three years!  But anywho…one of the clues this week for a three-letter verb reminded me of a sweet story from when Vivi was little and G and I were still in the throes of parenting an infant.

I make fun of G’s Brasilian accent now and again, but the man has an exceptional command of the English language.  Shoot, he even helps me with those crossword puzzles–usually for things like isotopes, names of stars, or atomic numbers.  Still, every so often, he bumps into a word he’s just never needed to know until that moment.

Like the time we took Vivi to the pediatrician when she was about six months old.  Vivi had a lot of ear infections, so we were talking to the doctor about whether they might impair her hearing and speech development.  The doctor said, “Does she make normal baby sounds?  Is she cooing?”  I assured him that she was and the doctor told me it was nothing to worry about.  He told us that we could get Vivi dressed again and left the room.  G put his hand on my arm and leaned in close.  “What is this word ‘coo?'”

It’s a delicate whisper of a word–coo.  Not something he would have run across in a chemistry lab, or a research paper, or a citizenship exam, or a patent application.  Not a word you hear at the grocery store, the gas station, the tax office, the cafeteria, the television.  It’s such a precise word.  You might know it if you have been close to birds or babies, but not otherwise.

I explained, “Oh, you know the sound doves make.  No?  It’s those little happy sounds she makes, like she’s trying to talk to us, like a cat purring.”  He smiled and cupped her tiny head in his calloused hand.  He leaned close to her and said, “Do you coo, gatinho do papai?”  I watched him as he tucked that word into his mind, on the English side, across from “arrulho.”  A sweet word that only came his way because he’s a Daddy.  

Is there a special word you associate with a moment in your life?  What’s a word you remember learning?

Sleep, Baby, Sleep

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When it’s time to go to bed, I can’t walk past my children’s bedrooms without stopping in to check on them while they sleep.  Tonight, I took an extra moment to sit still beside them.  I rested my hand on Vivi’s chest and felt her heart tapping along beneath my palm.  Peace.  In Carlos’ room, I pushed the sweaty curls off his brow.  He stirred then sighed.  I put my hand over his heart and breathed in the quiet in his dark little haven.

There is no faster path to the present moment than feeling my child’s heart beating.

Léon Bazille Perrault [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Léon Bazille Perrault “A Mother With Her Sleeping Child,” via Wikimedia Commons

Pecked to Death By Chickens

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Look, I know I’m lucky to live the life I do.  I KNOW.  Tonight, I had to change channels away from the news before Vivi saw a picture of a child killed by poison gas in Syria.  I flipped to local news where she saw coverage of the school hostage situation near Atlanta.  Nope.  A quick punch of the remote and there’s Johnny Depp as Barnabas Collins with his fangs hanging out.  I know, I know.

Then my mom guilt kicked in that I wasn’t spending 5pm-7pm doing a craft project from Pinterest with my adorable children while a healthy, balanced, organic, free range, fair trade, non-GMO, locally sourced meal from Gwyneth Paltrow’s cookbook simmered in our solar crockpot.   Nope, G was heading to pick up pizza.  Non-organic pizza because we had a coupon, dammit.  And we ate it off of Sonic the Hedgehog paper plates left over from a birthday party.

 

Evil Chicken

Evil Chicken

I know we are lucky to have money for pizza, a roof over our heads, birthday party paper plates, and a TV.  Still, today has left me spluttering.  I saw a sign once that said, “Raising children is like being pecked to death by chickens.”  It’ll kill you, but it takes a good long while.

Top Five Stupid Things That Are Eating At Me:

  1. Every surface in this house is covered in paper clutter, dog hair or crayon marks.
  2. There are five trucks on my kitchen floor.  I have to shuffle through a parking lot to not cook dinner.
  3. My son thinks that he is a siren.  He has been shrieking “WEEEEEE OH WEEEEEE OH WEEEEEE OH” for 48 hours.  Then he pauses, holds up his toy and whispers, “Fire truck.”
  4. Someone dragged sand box toys across the den and onto the sofa.  And you know what the secret prize is inside of sand box toys?  Sand.
  5. It’s always my stuff that gets broken.  This week alone:  a vase I’ve had for 15 years, some glasses that Richard loved, the finish on the dining table, and the lid to the pine toy box that my Daddy made from boards rescued from the ruins of my great-grandfather’s house.   Oh, and my spirit. That, too.

I know that in a couple of days I’ll be back in the ring and swinging.  Today, not so much.

Top Five Things That Kept Me Going Tonight:

  1. Carlos discovered the “Radio On” button on my alarm clock.  He pressed it and said, “DANCE!”  I started dancing.  He turned it off and I froze.  We did this for the entirety of “Mojo Rising.”  He just about forgot how to breathe he was laughing so hard.
  2. My friend Sara had a dead battery.  I dropped the plans I was making for not making dinner and went to help her.  I applied jumper cables successfully for the first time in my life.  A sweet boy in a Chi Omega formal shirt asked if we needed help then stood back and watched us manage fine.
  3. When we were watching Jeopardy, Vivi got a question right (Category:  Disney Villains) and she was soooo proud of herself.
  4. After bath time, I read “The Very Busy Spider” twice then snuggled Carlos for so long that the sleeve of my shirt was wet from his hair.
  5. This picture that Vivi drew at the YMCA:
"All Shall Be Loved"

“All Shall Be Loved”

All Shall Be Loved.

And I live to fight another day.  Back to the trenches!  

Doris and the Dragon

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I am still thinking about the idea of “shielding the joyous” and specifically the things that we do to shield our children from the horrors of this life.  The story that I am going to attempt to tell has been haunting me for a couple of days now.  I’ve told it to friends before, but I’ve never tried to write it out.  Here goes.

In the spring of 2004, just a few months before he was diagnosed with leukemia, and just a few months after we had set up house together, Richard and I went to Prague for spring break.  He had been a few years earlier, when the Czech Republic was established after the fall of Communism.  Prague has suffered under many masters in the 20th century–the Austro-Hungarian empire, then a few decades of republic, then the 1939 takeover by the Nazis, followed quickly by the Soviets.  It would take another 40 years to overthrow the Communist stranglehold in Prague’s “Velvet Revolution.”

See?  It’s a huge story and I don’t know how to explain it.  We know what the Nazis did all across Europe–Prague was in no way spared.  Prague had long been a center of Jewish culture, with five robust synagogues in the Jewish Quarter before 1939.  This was the city of the “Golem.”  But, like 6 million others, most of the Jews of Prague were murdered.  Modern-day Prague’s Jewish community finds itself with more synagogues than it needs for worship, so five of the old synagogues have been turned into a collective museum of Jewish history.  The Maisel Synagogue holds a permanent exhibit of Jewish history from the 10th-18th century.  The Spanish Synagogue (designed in Moorish style) serves as a repository of precious silver artifacts and a concert hall.  Klausen Synagogue features displays about everyday Jewish life and traditions.  The Old New Synagogue is the home of the Jewish cemetery with graves dating back to 1439.  The fifth synagogue–Pinkas Synagogue–is the one that brought me to my knees.

pinkasovaThe building itself has been unconsecrated and all ceremonial fixtures have been removed.  All that remains are its sandstone walls, a soft and glowing pinkish hue.  On those walls have been painted the names of every one of the 80,000 Bohemian and Moravian Jews who were murdered.  It took two artists five years to inscribe eighty thousand hand-painted names, with their dates of birth and death.  The names of the dead are arranged in families and grouped by the towns and villages in which they lived, so neighbors are reunited in this memorial.  Pinkas Synagogue is one of the most holy places I’ve have experienced.  Every wall, every silent surface…rings with names.  Beside the space for the Holy Ark are painted the names of the death camps where these people were turned into sky and earth and memory.  Pinkasova is “a long epitaph commemorating the names of those for whom a tombstone could not be erected.”

One of those names is Doris Zdekauerova, age 12.

How do I tell this next part?  How can I explain?  Outside Prague lies Terezin, the “transit camp” where many of these Jews began their journey toward the gas chamber.  Terezin, or Theresienstadt, was the Nazi’s model camp.  It’s the one they let the Red Cross film.  It’s the one they made a propaganda film about, called “The Fuhrer Gives a City to the Jews.”  Terezin had an orchestra and even staged a children’s opera.  It was a prison, but on the surface it looked nicer than most.  Still, it was a place of hunger, brutality and terror.  Terrified parents and children were forcibly kept apart.  The children were housed in large dormitories.  Doris lived there, for a time, until she was “sent East.”

The adults of Terezin decided that the best thing they could do to shield their children from the darkness surrounding them was to set up structure.  School lessons, plays, art classes–all conducted furtively with whatever supplies could be scavenged.  One teacher, an artist named Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, has gone down in history for her work with the children of Terezin.  Friedl had trained at the Bauhaus and her lessons with the children grew from the Bauhaus philosophy of exploring emotion and inhabiting experiences.  She encouraged the children to paint, draw and make collages to express their experiences.  Most importantly, Friedl ensured that her young students signed every piece of their work.  It was theirs.  Something they had created.  Their truth.  Their story.  Like most of the 60,000 prisoners of Terezin, Friedl Dicker-Brandeis was transported to Auschwitz where she was killed.  But before she left Terezin, she managed to fill two suitcases with 4500 pieces of art made by her 660 students.  Of the 660 children who signed works of art, 550 were exterminated “in the East.”  But their teacher hid their work and after the war was over, the two suitcases were discovered and turned over to the Jewish Museum of Prague.

Collage made from scavenged paper, Terezin

Collage made from scavenged paper, Terezin

You can see it.  I did.  The art collection is on permanent exhibit in the second floor gallery at Pinkas Synagogue, the house of the names.  You climb the stairs as if your life hasn’t been changed already by the silent witness of 80,000 names and then you see the children’s drawings.  Those rooms are some of the quietest I’ve ever witnessed.

Each piece of art is labeled with the child’s name, date of birth and date of death.  The first time I saw one without a date of death–with the caption “Survived”–I sobbed.  The drawings are arranged by theme:  “Traditions,” “Family,” “Transportation,” many of them feel like “Life Before” and “Life After.”

I found Doris in the section labeled “Fear.”  I remember one drawing, by another child, of a screaming guard.  That’s what I had expected from a child in the camps who was asked to describe fear.

But Doris Zdekauerova–born July 15, 1932 and died October 16, 1944–drew this:

A drawing by Doris Zdekauerova

A drawing by Doris Zdekauerova

A princess with flowing blonde hair in a clean white dress with puffy sleeves.  Standing calm beside a fire-breathing dragon.  That was Doris’ expression of “fear.”  She had to have known that her life had descended into the belly of a more dangerous beast, but while looking at this drawing, I felt an overwhelming sense of what the adults at Terezin had been trying to do.  They created a world within a world.  A safer place for the children to remember a few things about being children.  Those adults did such a good job of shielding the children that Doris, when asked to depict fear, drew a dragon.  Doris and the Dragon.  A girl.  The fire.  Her name.