by Jean Roberta
I sometimes wonder what I would pack if I had an hour to gather up my belongings before being rescued from a crisis situation.
In the early 1970s, my aunt and uncle and their three children were living in the Niger Delta area when a new country named Biafra seceded from Nigeria, and a civil war broke out. (My uncle was an American engineer working for Burlington Mills, and he was showing local employees how to use big industrial looms.)
The U.S. government sent planes to rescue American citizens stranded in Biafra. Among a few other items, my aunt gathered up her silverware, made of actual silver. When the family arrived home in South Carolina, they had no furniture for at least a week. They used orange crates as chairs and a table for dining on, but they used sterling silver knives, forks and spoons at every meal.
My aunt and her two brothers (one was my father) were the children of a jeweller and watchmaker. Items made of precious metal were not disposable for them.
A few years later, I experienced my own Nigerian crisis when the Nigerian man I had met in England and sponsored into Canada as my fiancé became unbearable to live with. When my closest friend offered to rescue me and my three-month-old baby while my husband was out of the house, I threw some stuff in a black plastic garbage bag, and away we went in friend's car to the local women's shelter.
Compared to the baby herself, everything else I owned looked non-essential, and it was all replaceable. Clothes and shoes? Well, yes, I had to have something to wear for the next few days, but none of them last a lifetime anyway. Grooming products? They’re easy to carry, and besides, they’re available at the drug store. Books? Hard to transport in bulk. Knicknacks? Meh. Plants? They don’t always survive in temporary, makeshift living arrangements. Luckily, we had no pets. If we had, I wouldn’t have left them with a raging alcoholic.
So many people around the world have had to cope with natural disasters over the last few weeks. My heart goes out to them, and I wish it were easier for hordes of refugees to come to the Canadian prairies. The worst thing we’ve faced lately is an unusually dry summer that has affected the wheat crop. (Watch for higher-priced bread in the next few months.)
I’m sure there’s nothing like an out-of-control fire or flood or winds that uproot trees and tear the roofs off houses to remind people of what is really valuable. Parents grab their kids first. Some pet-owners round up the furry children before leaving the premises.
It’s actually freeing to realize that inanimate belongings are not really essential to human life. Even books, as reluctant as I am to say this. I can literally live without books, and so can other avid readers.
I don’t need it is my mantra when I pack for a trip. Like Lisabet, though, I find it hard to travel light. (What if it’s very hot where I’m going? What if it’s very cold or very wet? What if there’s no sun-block or toothpaste or antiseptic cream there? What if there’s nothing to read except what I bring with me on a six-hour trip?)
I just need to put myself in crisis-survival mode the next time I plan to see the sights in some faraway place.
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Showing posts with label children. Show all posts
Showing posts with label children. Show all posts
Saturday, September 16, 2017
Thursday, October 1, 2015
True, Heartfelt, Loving Kindness
by Giselle Renarde
My mother recently told me about something that happened when I was a child. There was some kind of workshop for parents at my school. The leader asked everybody to write down five things they enjoyed doing, but none of those items could be family-related.
While everybody else wrote their lists, my mom sat staring at a blank piece of paper.
The workshop leader came over and asked what was wrong.
My mother said, "I can't think of anything to write. Everything I do is for my kids."
"Well, what do you do for fun?" the leader asked.
"I spend time with my kids."
"But non-kid things," the leader said. "Do you take time just for you?"
My mom didn't understand that question. She didn't understand the concept of ME TIME.
"What about reading?" the leader asked. "Do you ever read a book to relax?"
"No..."
"What about friends? Do you go out for drinks? Have a girls' night?"
My mom didn't have friends, aside from other parents at my school. And everything they did together involved us.
The workshop went on, but all my mother remembers was the fact that she had no interests. Twenty-something years later, she told me she felt like a non-person, in that moment. "What kind of a person doesn't have even ONE thing that they enjoy in life?"
I actually think it's sweet that my mom's joy came from us, her children. It showed. She never told us to quiet down or give Mommy a moment. I don't remember ever feeling like our mother resented us being around. That must have been because there was nothing else in the world she wanted to be doing. She just wanted to be around us, because we were the most important thing in her life.
Is there anything in my life that I would call THE MOST IMPORTANT?
The usual, I guess: my family, my girlfriend, my cats, my career.
But that one THE MOST IMPORTANT thing is rather more nebulous. It isn't a person or a thing. It's more like a feeling. It's kindness--which probably sounds weird, coming from someone who regularly swears at strangers (but, honestly, why do so many people try to run me over? and if a jogger shoves me into a mud puddle, oh yes, that jogger WILL be called an asshole)...
What was I saying?
Right. Kindness.
I don't always live up to my own ideals, but when I do, I make a conscious effort to treat everyone I encounter with the same big love I feel for my family. I see no reason not to. Sometimes it's really easy, but often it's a challenge. Many humans are not friendly. That's when I need to redouble my efforts, because the people who are meanest to me are probably the ones most in need of kindness.
True, heartfelt, loving kindness is important.
That's not a bad answer, eh?
On that note, I've got a new anthology on the market and I'm giving ALL my royalties away. I'd love it if you could help me spread the word about LGBT Love:
10 Queer, Trans, Bi, Lesbian and Gay Romance Stories
by Giselle Renarde
***All royalties from the sale of this anthology will be donated to charitable organizations supporting LGBT individuals and communities.***
Barnes|Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/lgbt-love-giselle-renarde/1122642963
Apple: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/id1038917868
All Romance Ebooks: https://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-lgbtlove10queertransbilesbianandgayromancestories-1894075-166.html
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0155ZIXXU?tag=dondes-20
Amazon UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/LGBT-Love-Lesbian-Romance-Stories-ebook/dp/B0155ZIXXU
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
My Creation
by Kristina Wright
I write a lot about my children. They are three and one and my life has been pretty much consumed by them the past few years. That's the way it is, when you have little kids. But yeah, I write a lot about these babies of mine. I think there are people who are sick to death of reading about my babies and seeing pictures of them on Facebook. I have this year-long project, you see, to take a picture every day of the two of them together. It started as a lark, to counter the repeated comment that you never take as many pictures of the second baby as you do of the first. This year, I can say I took just as many pictures of both of them. Maybe a few more of the second baby, actually.
Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, I write a lot about my children. For one, I didn't get around to having them until I was in my forties and that's kind of an anomaly (or so I've been told-- it seems to be more common in big cities). Not only did I have one baby, I had two. That also seems to be unusual-- most women in their forties have just the one kid. Unless they're taking fertility drugs, and then sometimes they end up with twins. Over forty = one pregnancy, regardless of number of offspring. So I've been told.
So what's my obsession with writing about my kids? Well, first off, I wasn't aware it was an obsession until a total (anonymous) stranger commented a couple of weeks ago about how I seemed to be dragging my feet on an anthology and while I had the excuse of toddlers, deadlines and health issues, I really need to get my act together and meet my professional obligations. (Okay, I'm paraphrasing, but that's how it read to me.) And my first thought was, "What the hell do you know about my day-to-day life?" And, of course, my own response was, "Quite a lot, actually. You write about your personal life, after all."
And so I do. I write a lot about my kids, in part, because I truly never expected to have any. To be honest, I didn't want kids from a very young age until maybe around age thirty. Even then, I was always rather ambivalent about it. Another thing I've written about, maybe not as much as my kids, is the fact that I've been married practically forever. Twenty-two years in October. I don't write quite as much about my husband and our marriage as I do about my children, maybe because he's been a part of my life for, well, literally half my life, while the kids are kind of the new, shiny toys in my life. But I have written quite a bit about my naval officer husband, our crazy whirlwind courtship, his numerous deployments, our military moves and our life in general-- it's a good life, there's a lot of good stuff to write about.
So there's my family. My two little boys, my amazing husband and... yeah, that's it. You see, I've written, here at least, about my childhood. It was, in a word, dysfunctional. I've written about my difficult relationship with my mother and the decade long estrangement before her death. I've written a little about mybfather (who is actually my stepfather, though he did legally adopt me), with whom I have no relationship, and I've written some about my birth father, whom I've never met and whose name I didn't know until five years ago. I can't remember if I've written much about my only sibling (only sibling I know of, at least), my brother, with whom I have had no relationship in over two decades-- and I'm fine with that. I have no grandparents to write about. My maternal grandfather died before I was born, my maternal grandmother died when I was two. I was never close to my father's (stepfather's) parents, his father died when I was around twelve, his mother never much took to me since I wasn't really her biological granddaughter and she and my mother hated each other. I don't even know if she's still alive.
All of my mother's family lives/lived in Missouri. It was a large family-- twelve children-- but with the exception of a couple of cousins I used to write to when I was a kid and maybe still exchange Christmas cards with if I have time, I have no relationship with them. My father's (stepfather's) family lived close to us in Florida and I did see my three cousins several times a year, but we were never particularly close either. Two of them, the boys, have died in the past few years and I found out long after the fact. There is only my one girl cousin and her family left-- and we rarely keep in touch, either. If not for Facebook, I'd probably know nothing at all about them.
That's my family. All of it. I spent my childhood immersed in books and dreaming about being sent away to boarding school and I have spent most of my adult life trying to make a family out of my friends. You know what I mean. "Friends are the family you choose" and all of that. And I do have a few very close, very precious friends. Are they family? In all the ways that matter, yes. To me, they are more my family than the brother I was raised with. But to them-- well, I think to most of my close friends, I'm a bit of a sorry case. Not quite an orphan, but certainly lacking the one thing that most of them seem to have: a big, happy, supportive, close family. (And if not all of them have all of those qualities, they certainly have three out of four.) So when the holidays role around, they are with their families, where they belong. And I am always a bit wistful and melancholy that I didn't grow up with the kind of family so many of my friends have.
My husband was deployed for our first baby's first Christmas-- and I was alone with a newborn for nearly five months. I did it all, and I did it alone for the first eight weeks. Then I hired a friend I had known for several years to be my part-time babysitter and I had a little help. But baby and me, we spent Christmas 2009 alone, just the two of us. He was exactly three weeks old, so he wasn't much company. It was okay-- I wasn't much company either. But we were together, me and the only family I had in the state. And that was okay. It was good. I had family. Yes, I could've gone somewhere, accepted an invitation to some friend's house to join their family celebration. But I was three weeks postpartum in winter and not keen on taking my tbaby out of the house. Okay, that's not the real reason. I didn't want to feel more alone than I already did. So I stayed home with my newborn and Christmas came and went.
The holidays have never been a particularly happy time in my life. Even with a terrific husband, this is a time of memories and melancholy for me. There are childhood Christmases I sort of remember that weren't horrible-- but none of them were truly happy. In a family like mine, well, there was always something to be sad about. I have had more than two dozen happier Christmases since then, but I have always felt like something was missing. I have always been grateful for this wonderful life I have made for myself, mostly because I know it could've gone in a completely different direction if I had been more a product of nurture than nature. Then again, perhaps I am a product of how I was raised-- I am determined that I will be happier than I was as a child. And I am determined my children will not have sad, melancholy memories trailing after them through life.
And so, yes, I write a lot about my kids. I had no real family to speak of, no magical, special home-and-hearth place where I felt safe and loved and supported. I didn't have a mother who tucked me into bed when I was sick and fed me chicken soup. My mother was of the, "If you're really sick, you won't be hungry and if you're hungry, you're well enough to come to the table" mindset. I was never a Daddy's girl and I'm not even sure my father (stepfather) remembers my birthday and he often misspelled my name (he married my mother when I was nine months old-- you'd think he'd remember that, at least). My brother and I were not best friends from birth, we were each other's nemesis in a hostile household, with him hating me for getting good grades and being the good child and me hating him because he got away with everything and was the "real" child. He turned out as you would expect the child of these parents who raised us to turn out. I am, as I have been told many times, an anomaly. Like everything else about me.
I write about my kids, my husband, this family of mine because I made it. I am a writer and I create characters and families every day, but here in my real life, I created the family I never had. I chose the man who would give me the love and nurturing I never got as a child, and he has given me all of that and more than I ever dreamed possible for going on twenty-three years. And, when I finally realized it was now or never and I needed to decide whether I wanted to have kids before Mother Nature decided it for me, I grew two children inside of me. I created my family. It's small, just the four of us, but it's double the size it was three years ago. And before that, when it was just two of us, I still had more of a sense of belonging in any house I lived with my husband than I ever did in the house where I grew up with people I didn't know or understand. I made my family. I love my friends, I am grateful to share holidays with people who are good and kind and funny and loving, happy that my kids have "aunts" and "uncles" and "cousins" and I will always call them part of my family. But now, like some miracle, I have this family of four that I feel as if I conjured from my dreams. We are happy, this family of mine. I spent a lot of years thinking such a thing wasn't even possible for me.
So yeah, that's why I write so much about my children.
I write a lot about my children. They are three and one and my life has been pretty much consumed by them the past few years. That's the way it is, when you have little kids. But yeah, I write a lot about these babies of mine. I think there are people who are sick to death of reading about my babies and seeing pictures of them on Facebook. I have this year-long project, you see, to take a picture every day of the two of them together. It started as a lark, to counter the repeated comment that you never take as many pictures of the second baby as you do of the first. This year, I can say I took just as many pictures of both of them. Maybe a few more of the second baby, actually.
Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, I write a lot about my children. For one, I didn't get around to having them until I was in my forties and that's kind of an anomaly (or so I've been told-- it seems to be more common in big cities). Not only did I have one baby, I had two. That also seems to be unusual-- most women in their forties have just the one kid. Unless they're taking fertility drugs, and then sometimes they end up with twins. Over forty = one pregnancy, regardless of number of offspring. So I've been told.
So what's my obsession with writing about my kids? Well, first off, I wasn't aware it was an obsession until a total (anonymous) stranger commented a couple of weeks ago about how I seemed to be dragging my feet on an anthology and while I had the excuse of toddlers, deadlines and health issues, I really need to get my act together and meet my professional obligations. (Okay, I'm paraphrasing, but that's how it read to me.) And my first thought was, "What the hell do you know about my day-to-day life?" And, of course, my own response was, "Quite a lot, actually. You write about your personal life, after all."
And so I do. I write a lot about my kids, in part, because I truly never expected to have any. To be honest, I didn't want kids from a very young age until maybe around age thirty. Even then, I was always rather ambivalent about it. Another thing I've written about, maybe not as much as my kids, is the fact that I've been married practically forever. Twenty-two years in October. I don't write quite as much about my husband and our marriage as I do about my children, maybe because he's been a part of my life for, well, literally half my life, while the kids are kind of the new, shiny toys in my life. But I have written quite a bit about my naval officer husband, our crazy whirlwind courtship, his numerous deployments, our military moves and our life in general-- it's a good life, there's a lot of good stuff to write about.
So there's my family. My two little boys, my amazing husband and... yeah, that's it. You see, I've written, here at least, about my childhood. It was, in a word, dysfunctional. I've written about my difficult relationship with my mother and the decade long estrangement before her death. I've written a little about mybfather (who is actually my stepfather, though he did legally adopt me), with whom I have no relationship, and I've written some about my birth father, whom I've never met and whose name I didn't know until five years ago. I can't remember if I've written much about my only sibling (only sibling I know of, at least), my brother, with whom I have had no relationship in over two decades-- and I'm fine with that. I have no grandparents to write about. My maternal grandfather died before I was born, my maternal grandmother died when I was two. I was never close to my father's (stepfather's) parents, his father died when I was around twelve, his mother never much took to me since I wasn't really her biological granddaughter and she and my mother hated each other. I don't even know if she's still alive.
All of my mother's family lives/lived in Missouri. It was a large family-- twelve children-- but with the exception of a couple of cousins I used to write to when I was a kid and maybe still exchange Christmas cards with if I have time, I have no relationship with them. My father's (stepfather's) family lived close to us in Florida and I did see my three cousins several times a year, but we were never particularly close either. Two of them, the boys, have died in the past few years and I found out long after the fact. There is only my one girl cousin and her family left-- and we rarely keep in touch, either. If not for Facebook, I'd probably know nothing at all about them.
That's my family. All of it. I spent my childhood immersed in books and dreaming about being sent away to boarding school and I have spent most of my adult life trying to make a family out of my friends. You know what I mean. "Friends are the family you choose" and all of that. And I do have a few very close, very precious friends. Are they family? In all the ways that matter, yes. To me, they are more my family than the brother I was raised with. But to them-- well, I think to most of my close friends, I'm a bit of a sorry case. Not quite an orphan, but certainly lacking the one thing that most of them seem to have: a big, happy, supportive, close family. (And if not all of them have all of those qualities, they certainly have three out of four.) So when the holidays role around, they are with their families, where they belong. And I am always a bit wistful and melancholy that I didn't grow up with the kind of family so many of my friends have.
My husband was deployed for our first baby's first Christmas-- and I was alone with a newborn for nearly five months. I did it all, and I did it alone for the first eight weeks. Then I hired a friend I had known for several years to be my part-time babysitter and I had a little help. But baby and me, we spent Christmas 2009 alone, just the two of us. He was exactly three weeks old, so he wasn't much company. It was okay-- I wasn't much company either. But we were together, me and the only family I had in the state. And that was okay. It was good. I had family. Yes, I could've gone somewhere, accepted an invitation to some friend's house to join their family celebration. But I was three weeks postpartum in winter and not keen on taking my tbaby out of the house. Okay, that's not the real reason. I didn't want to feel more alone than I already did. So I stayed home with my newborn and Christmas came and went.
The holidays have never been a particularly happy time in my life. Even with a terrific husband, this is a time of memories and melancholy for me. There are childhood Christmases I sort of remember that weren't horrible-- but none of them were truly happy. In a family like mine, well, there was always something to be sad about. I have had more than two dozen happier Christmases since then, but I have always felt like something was missing. I have always been grateful for this wonderful life I have made for myself, mostly because I know it could've gone in a completely different direction if I had been more a product of nurture than nature. Then again, perhaps I am a product of how I was raised-- I am determined that I will be happier than I was as a child. And I am determined my children will not have sad, melancholy memories trailing after them through life.
And so, yes, I write a lot about my kids. I had no real family to speak of, no magical, special home-and-hearth place where I felt safe and loved and supported. I didn't have a mother who tucked me into bed when I was sick and fed me chicken soup. My mother was of the, "If you're really sick, you won't be hungry and if you're hungry, you're well enough to come to the table" mindset. I was never a Daddy's girl and I'm not even sure my father (stepfather) remembers my birthday and he often misspelled my name (he married my mother when I was nine months old-- you'd think he'd remember that, at least). My brother and I were not best friends from birth, we were each other's nemesis in a hostile household, with him hating me for getting good grades and being the good child and me hating him because he got away with everything and was the "real" child. He turned out as you would expect the child of these parents who raised us to turn out. I am, as I have been told many times, an anomaly. Like everything else about me.
I write about my kids, my husband, this family of mine because I made it. I am a writer and I create characters and families every day, but here in my real life, I created the family I never had. I chose the man who would give me the love and nurturing I never got as a child, and he has given me all of that and more than I ever dreamed possible for going on twenty-three years. And, when I finally realized it was now or never and I needed to decide whether I wanted to have kids before Mother Nature decided it for me, I grew two children inside of me. I created my family. It's small, just the four of us, but it's double the size it was three years ago. And before that, when it was just two of us, I still had more of a sense of belonging in any house I lived with my husband than I ever did in the house where I grew up with people I didn't know or understand. I made my family. I love my friends, I am grateful to share holidays with people who are good and kind and funny and loving, happy that my kids have "aunts" and "uncles" and "cousins" and I will always call them part of my family. But now, like some miracle, I have this family of four that I feel as if I conjured from my dreams. We are happy, this family of mine. I spent a lot of years thinking such a thing wasn't even possible for me.
So yeah, that's why I write so much about my children.
Friday, April 27, 2012
The Rituals of Children
When you're a parent, you spend a lot of time hoping your baby is "normal"-- whatever "normal" is. There are articles and books out there dedicated to every childhood disorder, disease and condition and you watch and you wait and you hold your breath hoping that this little cough or that little facial tic isn't the sign of something bigger, scarier.
Being an older mother when my children were born (42 for the first, 44 for the second), I am hypersensitive to the idea of "normal." When strangers feel compelled to ask you while you're pregnant if you're worried about Down Syndrome or autism because of, well your age, you become sensitive. You rub your large watermelon-sized belly and you try to be polite even while you want to slap them silly for being so insensitive and downright cruel. Or maybe that's just me.
Rituals are the things of day-to-day life. The weekday rituals, the weekend rituals, the holiday rituals, the home rituals, the work rituals. They happen without thought. They are not truly rituals with a capital R, steeped in mysticism and profound significance; they are routines-- small r-- just a part of normal life. But what is routine and what is ritual? What is normal and what is abnormal? What is healthy and what is pathological?
I watch my two year old-- he's almost 29 months now, so nearly 2 and 1/2-- and how he processes household routines. He is at the age where he wants to do everything we do even though he doesn't always understand why we do things. He knows his dirty clothes go in the hamper and he puts them there each morning, but he doesn't know why he can't dig his favorite shirt out of the hamper and wear it again tomorrow. He knows the wrapper from his favorite cheese snack goes in the trash, but he doesn't understand why he can't pull something else out of the trash can and play with it. He understands that he has to share his toys with his little brother, but doesn't understand why he can't also share all of his food, too.
My son is trying to fit into the world-- our little world-- and make sense of the things that his young mind haven't quite figured out yet. At the same time, I'm trying to understand his garbled requests and the must-be-fulfilled rituals that aren't just delaying nap time or bedtime, but are crucial to his sense of order. And I wonder if this or that is "normal" or if it's a sign of something else. And then I wonder why "normal" is so narrow and rigid when it's clear that he is a beautiful, healthy, happy boy no matter what he does.
He lines his Hot Wheels cars up on the edge of his toddler bed each night before I tuck him in. A dozen or so cars are assigned sentry posts against the railing, the rest of the crate of cars tucked at the foot of the bed. He carries his Big Monkey around the house and on outings in the truck, his comfort toy, his "lovey." He changes seats at the kitchen table for various things. Dinner is in his own chair with the booster seat. Pre-bedtime fruit cup is in my chair. Breakfast is in the chair next to his brother. Three or four times a week, he drags the condiments out of the refrigerator and lines them up on the table-- ketchup, mustard, barbecue sauce, mayonnaise-- even if we're not having anything that requires condiments. Often, he will asks for dollops of each to be placed on his plate with his meal. Even if it's spaghetti, even if it's a bagel. He prefers his orange socks over all other color socks. He must find just the right CD for bedtime (lately, it's Matchbox 20) and turn on his star turtle. He much watch "video-video-video" on my iPhone; he is fascinated by videos of himself and will wave and hold up various Hot Wheels cars to show his video-twin. He must always push the button to open the garage door to let me leave.
And so it goes. Some routines/rituals fade away and are replaced by new ones. Some cause me a moment's pause-- is it normal for a child to line things up the way he does or to run full force at the wall again and again and then laugh hysterically when he crashes into it? Is it normal the way he repeats a word three times? Some of his antics just make me shake my head. He is a toddler, after all. A two year old trying to understand our adult rituals and making up a few of his own. Trying to learn the language so he can communicate what he needs instead of pat-pat-patting the refrigerator for more "joosh-joosh-joosh" or the floor so I will sit next to him. Trying to fit in and be a part of his community, even though his community so far doesn't extend beyond our house.
Rituals serve the purpose of helping us cope with life, fit in with our peers and live in our community. We wear blue and gold to honor our favorite sports team, we put on costumes to celebrate a holiday, we blow out candles to mark another year of life. We have rituals that are just our own-- a favorite color socks when you're two might be you're lucky color socks when you're twenty.
I'm rediscovering the importance of little rituals through the eyes of my son. The ritual of singing "Itsy Bitsy Spider" at bedtime or when he's hurt. The rituals of cheek kisses and high-fives and head-butts before I leave the house. The little things that make his world feel safe and secure-- the little things that make my world feel safe and secure, too. His brother isn't quite eight months old yet and is already showing preferences for toys and patting the table and making screeching noises to communicate. His rituals will form soon, the things that make him feel safe and secure. And because I've already gone through so much with his brother, I will worry less about what is normal and spend more time enjoying the individualism of his necessary rituals. Yes-yes-yes, I will.
Being an older mother when my children were born (42 for the first, 44 for the second), I am hypersensitive to the idea of "normal." When strangers feel compelled to ask you while you're pregnant if you're worried about Down Syndrome or autism because of, well your age, you become sensitive. You rub your large watermelon-sized belly and you try to be polite even while you want to slap them silly for being so insensitive and downright cruel. Or maybe that's just me.
Rituals are the things of day-to-day life. The weekday rituals, the weekend rituals, the holiday rituals, the home rituals, the work rituals. They happen without thought. They are not truly rituals with a capital R, steeped in mysticism and profound significance; they are routines-- small r-- just a part of normal life. But what is routine and what is ritual? What is normal and what is abnormal? What is healthy and what is pathological?
I watch my two year old-- he's almost 29 months now, so nearly 2 and 1/2-- and how he processes household routines. He is at the age where he wants to do everything we do even though he doesn't always understand why we do things. He knows his dirty clothes go in the hamper and he puts them there each morning, but he doesn't know why he can't dig his favorite shirt out of the hamper and wear it again tomorrow. He knows the wrapper from his favorite cheese snack goes in the trash, but he doesn't understand why he can't pull something else out of the trash can and play with it. He understands that he has to share his toys with his little brother, but doesn't understand why he can't also share all of his food, too.
My son is trying to fit into the world-- our little world-- and make sense of the things that his young mind haven't quite figured out yet. At the same time, I'm trying to understand his garbled requests and the must-be-fulfilled rituals that aren't just delaying nap time or bedtime, but are crucial to his sense of order. And I wonder if this or that is "normal" or if it's a sign of something else. And then I wonder why "normal" is so narrow and rigid when it's clear that he is a beautiful, healthy, happy boy no matter what he does.
He lines his Hot Wheels cars up on the edge of his toddler bed each night before I tuck him in. A dozen or so cars are assigned sentry posts against the railing, the rest of the crate of cars tucked at the foot of the bed. He carries his Big Monkey around the house and on outings in the truck, his comfort toy, his "lovey." He changes seats at the kitchen table for various things. Dinner is in his own chair with the booster seat. Pre-bedtime fruit cup is in my chair. Breakfast is in the chair next to his brother. Three or four times a week, he drags the condiments out of the refrigerator and lines them up on the table-- ketchup, mustard, barbecue sauce, mayonnaise-- even if we're not having anything that requires condiments. Often, he will asks for dollops of each to be placed on his plate with his meal. Even if it's spaghetti, even if it's a bagel. He prefers his orange socks over all other color socks. He must find just the right CD for bedtime (lately, it's Matchbox 20) and turn on his star turtle. He much watch "video-video-video" on my iPhone; he is fascinated by videos of himself and will wave and hold up various Hot Wheels cars to show his video-twin. He must always push the button to open the garage door to let me leave.
And so it goes. Some routines/rituals fade away and are replaced by new ones. Some cause me a moment's pause-- is it normal for a child to line things up the way he does or to run full force at the wall again and again and then laugh hysterically when he crashes into it? Is it normal the way he repeats a word three times? Some of his antics just make me shake my head. He is a toddler, after all. A two year old trying to understand our adult rituals and making up a few of his own. Trying to learn the language so he can communicate what he needs instead of pat-pat-patting the refrigerator for more "joosh-joosh-joosh" or the floor so I will sit next to him. Trying to fit in and be a part of his community, even though his community so far doesn't extend beyond our house.
Rituals serve the purpose of helping us cope with life, fit in with our peers and live in our community. We wear blue and gold to honor our favorite sports team, we put on costumes to celebrate a holiday, we blow out candles to mark another year of life. We have rituals that are just our own-- a favorite color socks when you're two might be you're lucky color socks when you're twenty.
I'm rediscovering the importance of little rituals through the eyes of my son. The ritual of singing "Itsy Bitsy Spider" at bedtime or when he's hurt. The rituals of cheek kisses and high-fives and head-butts before I leave the house. The little things that make his world feel safe and secure-- the little things that make my world feel safe and secure, too. His brother isn't quite eight months old yet and is already showing preferences for toys and patting the table and making screeching noises to communicate. His rituals will form soon, the things that make him feel safe and secure. And because I've already gone through so much with his brother, I will worry less about what is normal and spend more time enjoying the individualism of his necessary rituals. Yes-yes-yes, I will.
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Write On, Baby
By Lisabet Sarai
I like to think that I can write on any topic. This week's subject, however, has me stymied. I'm completely unqualified to offer my opinions on "Writing and Parenting".
I'm in my fifties and have been married for more than twenty five years, but, by choice, I have no children. It's not that I don't like kids--I do. I get along really well with children, mostly because I have vivid memories of what childhood was like. I can still summon the excitement of a snow day, school being canceled, an unanticipated gift. I remember the games I used to play in the woods with my brother and the stories that I made up for my dolls. As I recall, though, my favorite dolls were teenagers or adults, not babies. My fantasies involved living in a "studio apartment" (whatever that was--it sounded exciting!) and having a job as a famous scientist, not feeding bottles and changing diapers.
Anyway, I don't regret being childless, although I sometimes think that it's a waste of excellent genetic material. My husband never wanted kids, and I had very little inclination in that direction either. We were rarely in a stable financial situation--we had boom years and bust years-- and I knew that to bring up a child, you need money that you can count on, for eighteen years at least. Both of us worked full time, and there was no way that we could afford day care or a nanny.
Still, lots of parents face financial obstacles but that doesn't dampen their desire for children. Sometimes I think I'm just lacking a maternal gene. Actually, neither of my siblings have children, either. Perhaps being childless runs in my family.
When I reflect on the question, I suspect that I would not have been a good mother. Overprotected myself, I've no doubt I would have treated my children the same way. Children have always seemed such fragile creatures. I worry so much about my husband and our cats (both of whom are more competent than the average two year old) -- I'm sure I would have driven my kids, and myself, crazy.
I know that I'm a rarity, in the romance world, at least. Practically every author I can think of is married with kids. All the other members of the Grip have at least one child, ranging from toddlers to teenagers. I don't know how they do it. I'm hugely impressed. No, awed.
Your kids have to come first. So how can you pursue a writing career with one or more little creatures demanding your attention? If your kids are older, how do you explain that you write stories that some people consider immoral or evil?
I suspect that I'll get the answers to these questions over the course of the week. As for me, I have the luxury of writing without sticky hands grabbing my skirt or rap music blaring from a teen's room over my head.
The only thing I have to worry about is cat fur on the keyboard.
I like to think that I can write on any topic. This week's subject, however, has me stymied. I'm completely unqualified to offer my opinions on "Writing and Parenting".
I'm in my fifties and have been married for more than twenty five years, but, by choice, I have no children. It's not that I don't like kids--I do. I get along really well with children, mostly because I have vivid memories of what childhood was like. I can still summon the excitement of a snow day, school being canceled, an unanticipated gift. I remember the games I used to play in the woods with my brother and the stories that I made up for my dolls. As I recall, though, my favorite dolls were teenagers or adults, not babies. My fantasies involved living in a "studio apartment" (whatever that was--it sounded exciting!) and having a job as a famous scientist, not feeding bottles and changing diapers.
Anyway, I don't regret being childless, although I sometimes think that it's a waste of excellent genetic material. My husband never wanted kids, and I had very little inclination in that direction either. We were rarely in a stable financial situation--we had boom years and bust years-- and I knew that to bring up a child, you need money that you can count on, for eighteen years at least. Both of us worked full time, and there was no way that we could afford day care or a nanny.
Still, lots of parents face financial obstacles but that doesn't dampen their desire for children. Sometimes I think I'm just lacking a maternal gene. Actually, neither of my siblings have children, either. Perhaps being childless runs in my family.
When I reflect on the question, I suspect that I would not have been a good mother. Overprotected myself, I've no doubt I would have treated my children the same way. Children have always seemed such fragile creatures. I worry so much about my husband and our cats (both of whom are more competent than the average two year old) -- I'm sure I would have driven my kids, and myself, crazy.
I know that I'm a rarity, in the romance world, at least. Practically every author I can think of is married with kids. All the other members of the Grip have at least one child, ranging from toddlers to teenagers. I don't know how they do it. I'm hugely impressed. No, awed.
Your kids have to come first. So how can you pursue a writing career with one or more little creatures demanding your attention? If your kids are older, how do you explain that you write stories that some people consider immoral or evil?
I suspect that I'll get the answers to these questions over the course of the week. As for me, I have the luxury of writing without sticky hands grabbing my skirt or rap music blaring from a teen's room over my head.
The only thing I have to worry about is cat fur on the keyboard.
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