Might be time to kick my sartorial self up a notch. I came downstairs today wearing a pair of beat-up black ballet flats (instead of my standard Converse or other sneakers) and Whit looked at me with surprise.
“Are you going to Providence, Mummy?”
“No, Whitty, why?”
“Where are you going into those beautiful shoes, Mummy?”
went to a wonderful Obama fundraiser tonight with Bouff. Claire Messud read two quotes which really resonated with me:
There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.
– Franklin Roosevelt, 1936 Democratic convention
When power leads men towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses. For art establishes the basic human truth which must serve as the touchstone of our judgment.
– John Kennedy, October 26 1963 (Grace’s birthday), at the dedication of the Amherst College library (I learned that Mum and Dad were both there, though they did not know each other, as was Bouff’s dad – and one month later JFK was assassnated)
Different is not bad.
I have been thinking about what I wrote about Whit yesterday and realize that the people who have taught me the most in my life – about what it is to love, about who I am, about ways of approaching and undersatnding the world – are the most different from me. There is such incredible value to these people, these teachers: the people who push me, even when it is uncomfortable, who stretch me past where I have been, who drive me to take risks and to try things I never thought I would experience.
Thank you, the friends I hold most dear, for your patience as I try, stumble, learn. Know how much you are valued.
Whit and I spent the morning at Read & Romp, an annual fundraiser for Reach Out And Read that I have gone to for several years with Gracie. It was really interesting being with him this year. There are activity stations, each themed around a different children’s book. After participating in each activity (decorating a cookie, playing with doctor toys, building in a construction zone, making a spider out of a foam ball and pipe cleaners, etc) the children get a stamp in their “passport.” Grace, of course, was always very goal-oriented and wanted to fill her passport with stamps. Whit just wanted to sit and play with the blocks and trucks in the Mike Mulligan construction area. He also decorated two cookies and held a baby bunny rabbit.
It’s been a weekend of time with Whit for me (and next weekend will be as well as Grace is going to Disney with her father and grandparents). Yesterday afternoon we had dinner with the Lavallees and Woods at Christina and David’s house. While the rest of the kids roamed around the house and yard screaming and playing together, Whit quietly made his way up to the third floor play room and proceeded to play with the train table and dump trucks for almost an hour. I sat with him and watched him play and had a moment of strong recognition of myself in him: this kid is kind of private and a loner at heart. This is a trait of mine I’m only starting to really recognize and embrace now, in midlife, but I see it loud and clear in him.
Today I sat back and watched Whit navigate around the trucks and construction toys, and then gravitate to the window and look out at Boston Harbor (“Mummy! The big big ocean!” he cried). I felt, for a moment, how inscrutable he sometimes is to me. This is in marked contrast to the almost painful identification I have with Grace. I watched him looking out at the harbor and honestly struggled to remember his birth, his babyhood; I felt like he was not mine at all. Of course we know he is not mine, and I’ve written a lot about that, but what I mean is in that moment I felt like I did not know him particularly well.
Maybe this is a theme of parenting: looking at your children and seeing them as themselves, as separate individuals with personalities, preferences, and lives apart from you. My growing sense that my son approaches the world in entirely different ways than I do is wonderful at the same time that it is daunting. He seems as blessedly free from many of the insecurities and preoccupations that have marked me as Grace seems possessed of them. One thing I do know for sure is that the ways in which Whit is different from me will teach me just as much as the daily face-to-face confrontation I have with my own flaws in the form of Grace.
One recent morning (I cannot remember if it was Thursday, Friday, or yesterday) the children were bickering over breakfast and I got really pissed off at them.
Me: “You two both got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.”
Grace: “What does that mean, Mummy?”
Me: “It means you woke up in a cranky mood.”
Grace: “But Mummy, Whit and I can only get out of bed on one side. Otherwise we would be against the wall. Does that mean we are cranky every day?”
Ummm. Yes, sadly.