The Kids Are Alright...Right?

I've read two blog posts today that have me thinking about my son's personal safety. One was written by Lenore Skenazy at her blog, Free Range Kids. She wrote about her 10-year-old-son's train ride that ended with police, a train conductor, and Lenore trying to come to to terms with the fact that the boy had just taken a train ride—gasp!—all alone. The other was over at Strollerderby and was about one mother's confidence in her sons' ownership of pocket knives. Knives that could come in handy if the boys ever found themselves in a tussle with an adult who means to harm them. Yikes. 

Lenore has written before about her child's adventures in freedom. You may have read her widely-covered article about her son negotiating New York public transportation to find his way home from a retail store. Parents all over the country cried foul as they vilified her for trusting her son to recall what he'd been taught about personal safety and danger avoidance. 

My husband and I discussed the article for some time, he more ready to cheer and I more ready to simmer in skepticism. And this is interesting because he grew up fairly sheltered in a small California town, while I ran around Cincinnati taking the bus from morning till night. So why am I so reluctant to nurture the same independence in my own son? Well, given that he's only six, I'm pretty sure I don't need to teach him the bus routes to downtown Minneapolis just yet, but there will come a time that I'll need to let go. We only recently gave him an errand to do on his own, delivering an envelope to a neighbor's house on the next block. He was so proud when he returned, and I was too, as I breathed a sigh of relief. I know it's time for more miniature outings for my son. 

Sooner than I'd like to admit Henry will be asking to go to our nearby grocery store, drug store, or McDonald's, to spend some of his allowance. And why shouldn't he? When I was just a few years older than he is now I visited our local Kroger's at all times of the day and night. I shopped at the drug store and ate at the restaurants and ice cream shops and went to $1 movies at the local theater. I did this without my parents, or even my big sister. I walked blocks and blocks to and from the bus stops and I ran around downtown like it was my backyard. 

Am I a hypocrite? I feel like one. I want to say without hesitation that I'll encourage my son to try his wings and let him develop street smarts of his own. I want to say that I'll happily send him off to the bus stop or the light rail station. I want to declare with certainty that my son will make good decisions because I've taught him well. Will I give him a pocket knife? Probably not. It's just not something that's been done in my family. But the fact that a child might actually need a knife to fend off the boogie man someday? That's going to keep me up nights. 

Do You Hear What I Hear?

Do you hear it? The magical sounds of the season? A distant string of sleigh bells? Holiday music coming from the stereo? No? Oh, that’s due to the chorus of coughing in our house. Henry was nearly done with his cold, we thought, but his cough still lingers. Husband has it now, too, and I’m smack in the middle of it. Happy Holidays! The biggest bummer for me is that I’ve lost my singing voice. I’m no Martina McBride, but I do love to sing (and I sometimes wonder what might’ve happened had I applied at a music school....) especially at this time of the year. Unfortunately, I sound like a poor imitation of someone who can sing. Which means the nightly bedtime ritual of singing to my son has become less about singing holiday songs and more about “let’s get this over with.” I doubt he’s critiquing me, but if I can’t stand the way I sound, he probably can't, either.

I’ve also been baking and cooking holiday cookies and candy. This year, I made the fudge that I always make, only without the added fun of plunging my hand into the boiling sugar, milk, and butter. That was my trick last season. Delicious fudge, now with added essence of Jenni! I also made Ina Garten’s Rugelach cookies, which is time consuming but oh-so-delicious! We also have peanut butter blossoms, at Henry’s request. He remembered them from last year and he loves taking the Hershey’s kisses out of their silver wrappers, lucky for me. This coming weekend we’ll bake sugar cookie cut-outs: it’s just not Christmas without them.

Today I picked up an ornament for Henry and one for my husband, building on a tradition I started several years ago. So far, I think I'm the only one who's really enjoying this particular ritual. I think my husband, Tim, usually forgets to buy an ornament for me, and he's forced to go back to the local Patina or Bibelot shops at the last minute to see what's left. But what I'm hoping for is to create a trove of ornaments that Henry will someday take to his own home and hang on his own tree. Thinking that far ahead makes my heart ache. I want him to stay 6 years old forever.

Personally, I'm as excited as a little girl for this Christmas. I have very special gifts for both of the men in my life, to be hidden beneath the tree after both men are in bed on Christmas Eve. I cannot wait to see their faces Christmas morning. I bet I won't even mind when Henry gets us out of bed at 4 a.m. I've been pretty cognizant lately that things may be very different for us next year, if one of us loses our jobs, heaven forbid. So maybe I'm a bit like the ostrich this year, denying there's a recession and stubbornly insisting on buying presents for the big day. But I'm after something deeper, too. I want to have one special day where the words "can't afford" and "trying to save money" aren't part of the conversation. That may come soon enough. For one day, let us feel the thrill like children, laugh like fools, and eat like crazy.

Now pass those cookies!

Gift Giving, and Other Questionable Choices

My son is six years old. Still so delightfully innocent in many ways, and growing more and more worldly every minute, too, much to my dismay. I'm hearing about things that he's witnessing or participating in at school that are curling my hair. But last weekend, he made a request that stumped my husband and me for several days. I'm still not convinced we gave the right answer.

Son announced that he would like to buy a gift for a classmate, a girl that he sits next to in first grade. "Mom, I really want to buy her a present. I told her I would," he said earnestly. I didn't know what to say. A first-grader buying another first-grader a gift? Why? We're used to buying gifts for birthday parties, but this was a first. At first, I thought it wasn't a great idea, but I wanted more information. 

I asked why he wanted to do this. He told me he had promised her a gift. Ah-ha, I thought, maybe he's trying to buy her friendship. He also told me that he had given her a drawing or a note recently, and that she hadn't been any too impressed with it. So I figured he was trying to win her favor with a little gift. Then, he got specific about the gift: he wanted to buy her a tiny stuffed puppy he had seen at Target. A puppy he had wanted for himself. So, now he wanted to buy an item for someone else that he actually wanted for himself. Are you trying to get her to like you better, I asked? He said no, but I still wondered if that was part of the equation.

Some parenting decisions are fairly cut and dried. This wasn't. My spouse and I pondered over this for three days, and still came to different conclusions. Husband thought we should allow son to spend his money and to see what the outcome would be, learning a lesson if the recipient was still cool toward our kid. I thought it would be better to discourage spending money on someone who was not even really a friend, and offered to bake cookies as a gift as an alternative. In the end, we didn't let our son spend money on a trinket, and he brought her homemade treats instead. And the girl? She didn't care for the chocolate-covered pretzels at all. Frankly, I don't think she's that keen on our young man—that or she's incredibly difficult to please. 

I recall vividly wanting to give gifts to teachers I was crazy about and older boys that I had crushes on. I tried to give my third grade teacher a pair of earrings that had belonged to my grandmother. Luckily, she returned them and gently explained that I should keep them for myself. Its hard to know what to do when you're young and you have strong feelings for someone, and I'm still not sure if we made the right decision about this gift issue. I want my son to be generous of spirit, but how do I encourage that if I discourage gift-giving? When I was his age, I didn't have an allowance burning a hole in my pocket, or a parent offering to bake cookies with me to give as gifts (bless her heart, a single working mom, she didn't have time!) So I'm in uncharted territory here. I'll do my best. 

Crimes of the Mother

For a short time when I was a little girl, my family lived in New Jersey. I loved the junkyard across the street with a small creek running through it. I was forever bringing home "treasures" to share with my mom, who diplomatically tried to tell me to take the item back to the junk pile. Deer were often spied in our backyard, though not by me, by my older sister. Unless she was making it up to annoy me. "The deer was JUST there a second ago..."

We weren't in New Jersey for very long before we moved back to Ohio, but I have one vivid holiday memory from that time period. I think I was about 5 or 6 years old, and we were driving to Pennsylvania to visit my Uncle and Aunt. I was sick with the stomach flu, which must have made the drive especially fun for the rest of the family. I recall hearing my mom tell my dad to put me in the car with my pajamas on, and he made me get dressed instead. I was miserable. 

By the time we got to Pennsylvania, I felt much better. Good enough, in fact, to swipe a little box from beneath the Christmas tree and open it up. There were a pair of earrings, sparkling up from the white velvet. Just the treasure a little girl would want to find. Until she realized that she'd done something terribly wrong. So I hid the earrings outside the door, in the snow, and went back to playing with my sister. Naturally, my parents and my Aunt and Uncle called me out and I got quite a scolding for my thievery. 

Now that I'm a mother, I'm expecting my own child to repeat some of my mistakes, and I'm trying to remember to go easy on his first offenses. So far, his gaffes have been so full of innocence that I've had to fight against the urge to laugh or smile when they're reported to me, though I often fail. Lately we've had some difficult discussions at home as Henry struggles with goofs he's committed at school and his powerful desire that I not find out about them. Even the principal says she's caught herself grinning as she's trying to correct Henry's behavior. If trying not to laugh is my biggest challenge, I'm a lucky parent. 

Check back with me when my son is a teenager. See if I'm still trying not to laugh. 

Over the River and Through the Woods

When did it get to be mid-November?

Suddenly I need to create a Thanksgiving menu, figure out whether my husband is working on that Thursday, decide if I'm baking pies this year or visiting Baker's Square...so much to do. This holiday crept up on me, despite my excitement at this time of year. Excited, yes, but ready? Not so much. 

When I was a child, Thanksgiving was usually spent at my grandparents' home in Cincinnati. Arriving at the house, we would enter through the breezeway, like a little room connecting the garage and the kitchen. On the breezeway would be pies cooling, fresh from the oven. Cherry, pumpkin and apple are the pies that I recall. Once inside, my uncle and aunt would greet us, and I'd hear football coming from the family room. There was always lots of activity in the kitchen, of course, and we were immediately called on to do our part. I love the pictures of my sister, brother, and me wearing too-big aprons and standing on chairs to reach the kitchen counter. 

Dinner always meant crowded plates and a crowded dining room. I remember gaping at my uncle's plate, which was so full of food I thought it would topple over. Lots of stuffing and crescent rolls, gravy, turkey, and cranberries. Once the feast was over, it was time to clean the kitchen, which was always a bit dramatic. I don't ever recall seeing a man anywhere near the kitchen for clean-up duty, and as we hid in the family room, Grandma would come in to ask if anyone was going to help clean up. Which meant us kids. Since I only have one son, if I tried this technique with him, he'd be lost in the kitchen after a major holiday dinner. Maybe when he's older I can revive this tradition (she said sarcastically...)

Later in the evening, coffee and pie were on the table, and my sister and I were brushing our aunt's long hair while the adults talked. I have such warm memories of these holidays. Now, we live hundreds of miles from our families, so Thanksgiving is usually a very quiet day with just the three of us. Occasionally, family will make the trip to join us for the long weekend, and then our little house is full to bursting. These are fun times, too, though its always a relief to hear the solitude after having a houseful of company. 

The day after the big turkey, we put the small Christmas tree up in my son's room and hang the ornaments. I would have loved having my very own tree in my very own room when I was a little girl! This year, I might attempt hanging lights on the house. Its all part of making some memories for my child, like those I have from my own childhood. 

Hope

I am still reeling, weeping, shouting, and shaking my head in near-disbelief. The man who spoke at the 2004 Democratic National Convention and who brought me to tears, the man who I said would be our first Black president, has indeed become president. With nary a misstep, with a sober, careful campaign, and with dignity unmatched by any candidate in recent years, Obama is our next president. I am moved almost beyond words.

So, I'll let others speak for me. For they do it so much better than I, this expression of joy with such eloquence. 

A man interviewed on NPR said, "Rosa sat so Martin could walk. Martin walked so Obama could run. Obama runs so our children can fly." 

A columnist in The New York Times described challenging her children to back up their opinions when it came to politics, or any other topic for that matter. "Don't tell, show," she said. She writes this week about trying to find a way to impress upon our children how very magnificent it is that our first African-American president has been elected. 

On national television, Colin Powell choked up as he described the emotions felt when he knew Obama had secured the vote. A careful, elegant, and well-respected United States secretary of state brought me to tears, as I listened to him talk about this historic event. 

In the comments section of a major daily newspaper, the mom of a bi-racial child told of the remark her daughter made as she watched the election results with her parents: "Mom, he's brown like me!" Oh, did I weep.

On election day, as I drove to school to pick up my son, a bald eagle landed in a tree directly above my car. I parked immediately and got out, to gape at this magical, evocative creature, on this, the most important political day of my life. After a few moments, he gently flew away. After I had my son in the car, a half hour later, and as we drove toward the polling place, we saw the eagle again, soaring right ahead of us. I excitedly pointed him out to my son and we shared the joy of the moment. What a day to see an eagle! On this of all days. Then as we parked at the polling location, we once again saw the eagle flying overhead. "Mom, he led us to the voting place!," my son exclaimed.

There are no words, kiddo. There are no words. 

The Very First Goat

Just when I think I know something, my son Henry asks me a question and I find myself fumbling for an answer. This morning's question made me smile because of its depth and also its innocence.

"Mommy, what was the very first animal?"

Well, since I'm not sure what the first animal was, I'm silent for a minute.

"I mean, when I look at a goat, I know another goat gave birth to it, and another one gave birth to that one, and another one gave birth to THAT one. But what was the very first animal? How was it made?"

I tell him that all life started as cells, and some cells got together and made a lump of cells, and from that they made another lump, and eventually that lump was more like a creature, and its pretty likely this creature lived in the water.

"But what was the very first animal?"

Then I try to explain how a lump of cells changes into a fish or a turtle or a mosquito, but since we're on the phone for this conversation and I'm at work, I cannot get too deeply into evolution. 

Soon, Henry has lost interest and I'm back to work, but his question stays with me. He's a quick one. He's been asking all sorts of intriguing (and impossible!) questions lately. He asks about spirituality, and we talk about things he's heard at school. My favorite was at around this time last year,  when he still rode the school bus. Over dinner, Henry informed me that angels had visited the German Shepherds in a field. Then he wanted to act out the story. I got to be the German Shepherd. You know, the dog. That was priceless.

I love that my son is curious, and I hope I'm able to foster his curiosity, to encourage his questions for a lifetime. After all, I'm 37 years old and I have questions every day. Mostly, I hope he is always seeking. There are too many people on this earth who think they have all the answers, and they have stopped seeking, stopped questioning. They send me email filled with messages that offend me and are wholly untrue. They shout at the top of their lungs about their version of the facts, dismissing the possibility that there may be another side to the issue.

They make my head hurt.

So I'm delighted when Henry asks me questions, and when he questions what he's heard. We could all use a little more questioning, a little less certainty, if you get my meaning. We could use a little more wondering about the very first goat.