Froggin'

Over the past decade, a profitable new marketing group has been identified: tweens.  Many people mistakenly believe it represents a bona fide psychological stage of development when it was actually created by the business world to carve out a  new marketing niche.  The term is applied almost exclusively to girls, not boys, and implies that girls ages eight to eleven are "between" childhood and their teen years, rather than the young children they still are.  When younger girls are directly targeted by the media, they are that much more susceptible to messages that negatively influence their self-regard and distract them from more important developmental tasks, such as learning how to act kindly toward their peers, write a proper paragraph, or imagine their future as a novelist or astronaut.  In turn, the positive self-image characteristic of eight to ten-year-olds erodes, leaving a flimsy foundation for adolescent identity development.  --- SuEllen Hamkins, MD and Renee Schultz, MA

I prefer mud to media; it's so much easier to wash out.  Keep froggin' girls!







Three Golden Hairs and a Loose Tooth

Last weekend I was lying in bed, like I often do on Sunday mornings, trying to catch up on a few minutes of the hours of sleep I lose during the week due to various reasons (work, Ophelia's 6am rendition of "Puff the Magic Dragon," cat throwing up in the middle of the night, etc...).  Emerson--also tired, also a victim of the early morning singing routine--was next to me, quietly finger knitting the yarn attached to her stuffed kitty's neck (her leash, apparently), when I felt her body become completely still.

"Mom."

Usually I get annoyed when Emerson breaks the Sunday morning no talking (and no wiggling) rule, but this wasn't a usual voice.  It wasn't the begging or whispering or whining or crying I get from a child who is restless, hungry, tired or bored.  And it wasn't an exclamation either...not a shout...although there seemed to be a hint of excitement beneath the surface.  It was just Emerson's regular voice, but stronger, clearer, as if she had something really important to say.

"Mom."

"What, honey?"

"My tooth just came out."

After a week of wiggling and jiggling, chewing crunchy foods, and playing rough, Emerson has lost her first tooth.  Not on the playground or at gymnastics, but in bed on a quiet Sunday morning.

Exciting stuff, I tell you...a six-year-old and her first tooth, (Emerson and Matt made a little felt pouch yesterday to put her tooth in under her pillow, and she spent a good portion of the morning pulling the tooth in and out of it) although truth be told, I'm not sure who is more excited, Emerson or me.  At various intervals during the day I would look at Emerson and ask her to smile, which she did willingly, but by the end of the day she was wondering out loud about my seeming obsession with her changing grin.

I suppose I could ever be more excited than Emerson about the loss of her first tooth, but in some ways I think I am equally as excited.  Equally...but for completely different reasons and expressed in a very different way.  As Emerson dreamt upstairs, giddy at the thought that a fairy will fly into her bedroom and leave a surprise, I sat downstairs, remembering the day six years ago when, to my surprise, I found a small, white nub in my nearly one-year-old's mouth.

That is part of the excitement for me--the nostalgic remembrances of when that tooth, that very tooth I am able to now hold in my hand, first showed itself to us.  How for three months her sweet smile was a one-toothed-grin, and how wonderful and pure that time was.

But there is another important aspect as well--the one concerning the "nearly one-year-old" part.  Important because the average child sprouts teeth at around six months, and all the babies around me at the time had plenty of teeth...except Emerson. Yet I was still surprised to see it there. Not expecting it, not waiting, not calling the doctor every chance I got, or stuffing fluoride into her mouth. We were just playing in the grass when I happened to look at her a certain way in a certain light, and there it was. A change. A sign of growing.

I can remember worrying about many things when Emerson was a tiny infant--that she would stop breathing in her sleep (I used to check on her just about every minute when she was a newborn.  True story.), that she had autism because of her expressionless stare, that she was going to be overweight, stupid and buck-toothed because I was unable to breastfeed, the list went on and on...  By the time Emerson was around four months old, however, I came to realization that most of those concerns weren't sprouting from maternal instinct, but from the plethora of parenting information available today, so I took action.  I got rid of all the parenting books, took everything I heard with a grain of salt, and did something mothers all over the world have been doing for years--I trusted the process.  By the time that first little tooth showed up, I was wading in calm waters.

The surety that everything will turn out as it was meant to was relatively easy when it was just Me vs. The World of Parenting Advice.  It has become a bit more difficult now that it is Me vs. Teachers, Educational Specialists, Administrators, and Legislators (who somewhat randomly decide age cut-off dates for school).  Mother Nature is easy to trust...but these people?

Over the past few months I have been wondering--again--if Emerson should really be in the first grade this year, or if she should have spent this past year in kindergarten.  Should she move on to second grade next year or take a year off?  These wonderings came in the midst of some difficulties this winter:  Emerson sobbing herself to sleep and being scared of some of the fairy tales being told at school, me visiting the classroom for her half-birthday and finding Emerson looking tiny and afraid, having her teacher tell us (in a manner that was merely informative, completely free of worry) that Emerson is having trouble with recall--the retelling of stories he has told in class--and of her timidness in general...including singing (oh how she has belted out the words to her favorite songs in the past!), having him also report that she has been expressing nervous tendencies at school--biting her hands, trembling...

Slowly, my mind took over again.  I started looking at the kindergartners a little more closely, wondering if Emerson would feel more comfortable in this peer group.  I spoke with the parents of every youngest child in every grade of the elementary school.  I started daydreaming about possible plans for our "year off"--unschooling, travel, late mornings, lazy days...

...and then Emerson sat down one day and read me a book.  In disbelief (it was a book we had read before, and I thought she had memorized it), I immediately presented her with a book she had never seen before.  And she read that too.  Now in order to fully understand this, you need to take into consideration the fact that Emerson goes to a Waldorf School, where connecting printed words and living concepts is taught gradually and subtly.  Emerson was not being pumped on phonics, but here she was demonstrating the cognitive, linguistic and social skills necessary to read.  Like...well...a first-grader.

And other things starting happening too.  She stopped crying herself to sleep and began to be her content self again, she became more assertive in social gatherings, she made some new best friends in her class (boys...those people she has overlooked for the past few years),

and she lost her tooth--the last one in her class to do so.  Right on time.

This last week was a big one for the first grade, with their lengthy (and toothless) production of The Three Golden Hairs.  There were three showings, the last of which coincided with the May Fair.  As I sat in the audience, I was nervous for Emerson, expecting her to come into the room like a deer in headlights, but my fears couldn't have been more unfounded.  Emerson (and the rest of the class) came into the room smiling, playing their flutes, and proceeded to perform for close to an hour, reciting the lines on cue (all the children said all the lines in the entire play), managing numerous costume and set changes, and working together in a way that was both hilarious and awe inspiring.  As a group, the children were emboldened.  They supported each other at every turn, they accomplished something fantastic, and together they were proud.

Now when I look at the current kindergartners they look so incredibly tiny to me.  The first graders seem to have each grown a foot since spring weather arrived.  Sometime between the first day of school and now these fifteen children have become a collective unit--a family.  And even though Emerson may march to her own personal drummer,

she is still and integral, valued, and loved part of the whole.

(And if I wasn't sure enough that Emerson was in the right place, I could just ask her.  When I mentioned her being in class with the current kindergarten girls, she said "nah...all they do all day is try and look at each other's underwear...")

Spring Fling:

A few days of shorts-weather in April when I realize my kids are getting older and can fend for themselves...which leaves a little more time for adults to drink martinis and order menu items that include the words "hot lover."  Fun.

Jethro

It's been two months since we had our first ice-cream cones of the season. It was March eighth, we could see snow still on the mountains in the distance, and the wind was blowing madly, but we ate them outside--like true New Englanders--after which the kids chased chickens and barn-cats through the cow pasture.  No jackets.  No hats.  No gloves.  Spring was coming.

(It's hard to believe that just a week before that we celebrated our first official snow day--tramping around the woods in snowshoes, happily closed off from the rest of the world, content on our own island.  One day we were sipping hot tea next to the wood stove, the next day we were eating ice-cream with friends.)

As I sat on the edge of a tractor-tire sandbox, soaking myself in the sun's rays, listening the the sound of laughter all around me, I was overcome by the feeling that only happens on an early spring day, fresh on the heels of a twenty-four-hour snowstorm and a few sunny, but biting, winter days: I felt the surge of possibility.  There was an opening inside me--a space--from which I heard the whisper you can do anything...

It was this whisper that made the events of the past few days even more haunting.  But let me back up some more...

Two weeks before the day of the ice-cream was the official start of February vacation--another time when there is space, where things feel a little more possible.  After thinking about it for years, and plotting it for months, Matt took the day off work and the entire family drove to New Hampshire to pick-up our newest family member.

Meet Jethro, the world's most handsome, gentle, lovable dog, whose "eyes look sad even when he's happy." (Says Emerson, who added a likeness of him to a family drawing the moment we returned home.)

The day before the ice-cream, Ophelia and I drove to New Hampshire again--this time to bring him back.

There were many reasons that made it seem like the right decision at the time - the financial commitment, our cat's refusal to come up from the basement, our lack of a vacuum cleaner, his naughtiness when we left him alone for a few minutes, (coupled by the fact that very few areas of the house remain "off-limits" to a dog of this size and intelligence when he is getting into mischief), the fact that once we loaded all the warm bodies into the car for a vacation we didn't have any room for luggage.  The list went on and on...

But the main reason--really--was me.  The "me" who spent the first thirty years of her life roaming free with little or no commitments, the "me" who has designated the last seven years of her life to taking care of people, the "me" who has relinquished all personal space to weave three extra people (and an attention seeking cat) into her life, the "me" who is loving this newer phase of her life so much that she thought a dog would just add more happiness... That me.

And of course it was me that the dog latched onto.  When I walked down the hall, he walked down the hall.  When I was in our tiny kitchen trying to do dishes, he lay in our tiny kitchen--in front of the dishwasher.  When I went to the bathroom, he sat next to me.  When I took a shower--which always begins with the door closed--it would only take a few minutes before there was a little girl in the room telling me something "very important," and a wet dog-nose poking through the curtain.  When we drove someplace he always ended up climbing over the kids in the back and sitting--somehow..this dog is big!--on the center console in the front seat.  Most distressing, however, was that when I went down to the basement (the home of our computer and television, and also--for this two week period--our cat) to work on my blog or watch a movie--the only time I have to myself--the dog would stand at the top of the stairs barking, whining, and jumping up on the gate.

Yes, I realize these are all normal dog behaviors--especially for a rescue dog that is adjusting to life in a new home--but when viewed alongside all the other reasons to not have a dog (in a couple of years I'll be working full-time and I think it's really mean to leave a dog alone all day, what will we do with him when we go away?, how will I find time in my busy life to get him the exercise he needs?...) it was the personal space issue that pushed me over the edge.  In all the plotting and planning, I failed to envision a living being latching on to me quite so desperately.  Worse, in all the plotting and planning I envisioned being able to give much more of myself then I am actually able.

Of course it was this issue--this lack of ability, on my part, to make room for another living creature in my life--that bothered me most as I sat eating my ice-cream cone the next day.  As I watched everyone around me laughing and playing, celebrating our reconnection to the earth and to each other, anticipating the melting away of ice and snow and the coming of the growing season, I felt hollow inside.  On that day--so expansive and liberating--I sat not with regret, but shame.  Shame at my inability to let myself grow, open new parts of my heart, make new spaces.  As I watched the first crocuses opening around me, I sat knowing I had willingly closed the door on a part of life.

There is an old wives' tale--or a ridiculous piece of relationship advice in the spirit of consolation--that the amount of time to "get-over" someone after a relationship has ended equals the length of the relationship itself. We had two weeks with Jethro, during which time we got our fill of his wonderful qualities (loyalty, intelligence, fun...) and his not-so-wonderful qualities (neediness, destructiveness, a little too interested in the cat...)  We celebrated our only snow-storm of the year with him(October notwithstanding) and by the end of that time he had really begun to settle down and weave himself into our life and hearts. 

But by that time I had already made a decision (and changed my mind, and made a decision, and changed my mind...).  I had called the rescue.  He was going back.

Because the rescue was shelterless and there were no available foster homes at the time of my call, we kept Jethro for four more days, during which our short burst of wintry weather held, with crisp, cold sunny days. I feel lucky we were able to spend that extra time with him, (Emerson even took a day off school) letting him run through snowy fields along the river and romp around the yard, although it was gut-wrenching to see him adjusting to life in our family when I knew he was going to leave. I had to keep reminding myself that things seemed so much easier only because there was an end in sight.  Although I felt feelings of regret, fear of what would happen to him, guilt for doing this to a living being, I also felt sure that the decision I had made was the right one.

The day Ophelia and I drove Jethro back to New Hampshire the air was warming up.  The sun was shining, and the snow was beginning to melt.  We arrived at our rendezvous point a half-hour early so that we could spend some time alone with Jethro outside, saying goodbye.  On the ride home Ophelia fell asleep and I found myself looking for Jethro in the rear-view mirror.  I also found myself sobbing.

Two and a half weeks.  That's the magic number according to the old wives, isn't it?  It's been two months and I'm still not sure that I'm "over him" yet.  It certainly got easier than it was those first weeks, missing him thumping down beside me at night and the routines we had adapted together.  For about a week I went outside first thing in the morning even though I didn't have too, and listened to the birds singing...watched the sun rise.  I thought there would be an immediate sense of freedom, but instead I spent the next few weeks feeling like something was missing.  

Ultimately, though, the old wives were right.  It may not be an exact science, but those feelings have lessened, and life moves along.  Jethro was adopted less than two weeks after we dropped him off, and although I don't know where he is now, I like to think he is with a family who is appreciating him more than we could have at this time in our lives.  And as for me, I am realizing that even though I was unable to make room for a dog in my life right now, there is another space that has come instead. A space in which to come face to face with the not-so-wonderful qualities that lie within me.  A space in which to recognize these facets, learn from them, and stretch myself...if only a little. 

An Easter Post for Emily

Spring has begun to visit our house, and as I watch the sleepy bears, bumblebees and daffodils rise from their winter sleeps, I reckon it is time for another awakening as well.  After a long and needed silence, I'm ready to be back on the blog! 

More words to come! Soon!