Tag Archives: nostalgia

If Only…

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When I was growing up my father watched the 6:00 news every night. Maybe I have a naturally anxious disposition, but my limited understanding of the Cold War, various shootings, bombings, ethnic cleansing, kidnappings, AIDS, and weather calamities had me pretty certain we were all going to die, probably gruesomely and pretty soon.

Thanks to DVR, my children are blissfully sheltered from so much of the world’s ugliness. While I’m happy to get most of my news from Jon Stewart and Facebook, my husband and I usually watch the evening news after the kids are in bed. I think Luke would somewhat understand the current events unfolding on the news were he to see it, but Sally sees everything through her three-year-old lens of magic, pixie dust, and wonderful love rainbow tea parties.

The other night Sally came downstairs after bedtime with some ailment or another, it’s always something. I let her sit on my lap for a few minutes while we watched the news, because my husband and I had a sudden, silent standoff about who would bring her back upstairs. (I won.)

So, for the first time in her life, she watched the news.

She saw: South Korean soldiers dressed in camouflage fatigues patrolling the border.

Her interpretation: Haha! Look at those funny men. They’re all dressed up like cows. That’s funny that they’re all dressed up as cows. Silly men, dressed as cows.

She saw: South Korean soldiers peering at their North Korean counterparts, mere yards away, through the telescopic lenses of their deadly rifles.

Her interpretation: Look! That one is dressed up like a cow and pretending he’s a pirate.

She saw: Missiles launched into the sky with lethal potential.

Her interpretation: Oooh! Rocket ships!

She went to sleep that night with visions of rocket ships and cow-men playing pirate.

I’d like to keep her in this peaceful safety bubble forever, but the world is against me in this. All too soon she’ll be aware of war, of murderous madmen killing children, of rape and violence and sickness and all the other things that occupy the thoughts of this anxious mother while I lay awake at night, hoping against tragedy.

My last cute Christmas?

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12

Is this the last year that Sally will call Santa “Ganta Gauze?”*

Is this the last year that Luke will truly believe in the magic without any nagging doubts?

I spend a lot of time frustrated with my little kids. They are demanding, needy, and incapable of doing most things by themselves. Gloves are still impossible to get fingers into correctly. Zippers confound. Food needs to be prepared, fetched, cut up, cooled off. They fall down and hurt themselves constantly. They can’t walk far or fast.

When they’re older these problems will be long forgotten. They’ll be competent, tall enough to reach things, and probably even interesting and funny, (fingers crossed). But the magic will be gone. The wide-eyed wonder at life’s simple miracles. Big kids are cool, but they’re not cute.

Bigness and cuteness are inversely related after the age of 3. Up until then, babies keep getting cuter. You think your newborn is the cutest thing ever, but at 7 months when she’s fat and giggly? Cuter. At 2 when he’s rockin’ his footie pajamas and squealing as you chase him around the house? Cuter. At 3 when she’s brave and independent but still needs to check in with a quick hug and kiss? Cuter.

Luke is nearly 6. Don’t get me wrong; he is still maximally cute. But as he becomes more worldly, “cute” is no longer his biggest descriptor. He uses words like “literally” correctly, which is more than I can say for at least half the people on Facebook. He’s smart, sensitive, energetic, impossibly stubborn, and kind. He has always been all of these things, but cute trumped them when he was the tiniest person walking down the street at 10-months-old.

Sally is at her peak right now at 3. Her ratio of “baby” to “big kid” is in exactly the right proportions to leave a wake of people swooning wherever she goes. But as she approaches 3 1/2, she’s aware of this power. Damn.

This slow decline in cuteness is why people have more babies. It is responsible for that insane thought: “Oh, we can have just one more.” We think this even when the two we have feel like more than we can handle. (Don’t get your hopes up, Mom.)

I’m letting go of Luke, slowly and reluctantly. He’s in school now, leading a life I’m not a part of. And he’s getting easier and easier as he gets older. Sally is different. I’ve been begging her to stop growing up since she was about 2 1/2. She refuses to listen. For now, she still wants to hold my hand, even if we’re sitting next to each other watching a movie. But I know what’s coming. While Luke gets easier, she will get harder. Her inevitable pull away from me will break my heart. Maybe she won’t spill a cup of milk daily anymore, but she also won’t take my face in both of her little hands and tell me that she loves me “go, go, GO much!” (Refer to Sally/English Translator below.)

So I’m relishing this Christmas. My kids are going burst with excitement when they see that Santa came. They’ll tear into toys and games and then they’ll play. There will be tantrums, tears, audacious complaints of boredom, and sibling fights to be sure. There will be food fetching, butt wiping, and spills to clean up. But there will be magic.

* Sally/English Translator: replace all pronounced G’s with S’s.

Reflections after a tragedy

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This weekend I loved my kids with abandon. I butterfly kissed, painted, baked, tea partied, and crawled around the house giving horse rides. I let them eat french fries and watch too much TV. They stayed up late, then we read extra books and sang extra lullabies.

This was one of the best weekends of my family’s life.

In between all of this, I wiped my tears away hoping no one noticed. I weathered sudden panics and blinked back tears again.

Everywhere I went I saw children radiantly accepting extra affection. Another kiss, squeeze, smile, tousle of the hair. Parents, brokenhearted, lavished their kids with love, attention, indulgence, and total appreciation.

What is normally taken for granted was decidedly not.

I can barely breathe when I think of the children, teachers, first responders, and community of Newtown. I picture the two little faces I know and love so well on every one of those lost kids. Dread and terror just don’t seem like strong enough words.

So I was present this weekend. I relished my son running around the house at bedtime wearing nothing but a pull-up and red cape. I ate up my daughter’s manipulative doe eyes and I gave her all the cuddles she craved.

Not understanding that anything was amiss, that part of the world broke on Friday, my kids did what kids do: took complete advantage of their mother’s apparent temporary insanity. They brazenly asked for dessert after breakfast, complete furniture rearrangement for an authentic home movie theater experience, later bed times, more candy. I said yes.

In the midst of my grief and fear, I’ve changed in a way that I sincerely hope can’t be unchanged. Despite all my sarcasm, frustration, irritability, and joking, my children are beyond precious to me. So why not just tuck them in one last time? Fetch one last drink of water? There are far too many parents out there tonight who can’t. They would give anything for a prolonged bedtime routine.