I’m making scrambled eggs. It’s not easy (for me).
Chris runs into the kitchen, stops short, stares, and retreats. I hear him in the next room: “Martin! Help! Smoky! Help! Help!”
He’s right. The smoke alarm blares, the children sprint around, screaming and laughing.
Martin, from the beginning, has been fascinated by creatures. Sea and land, wiggly and slimy.
I wasn’t sure how much of nature he was ready for though, and when. Lions chasing down a baby elephant on a nature show? A snake grabbing and swallowing a frog? Is that violence and death that a child should be much older to see and understand, or is it nature and his world?
I didn’t need to wonder–Martin lets me know. If I startle at a, to me, somewhat gruesome image in the nature books he likes, Martin explains, yet again, always patiently, “That’s just the way nature works, Mom.” I wasn’t sure if he was just repeating a line from one of his favorite creature-adventurers, or if he really got it. I think he gets it. Yesterday, he elaborated on the death theme: “Mom, all creatures have to die someday. Even people die. You, me, Dad, Chris, Grammy, Gramps . . .” After he listed most of our family, I asked him, “But what will happen when we die?” I thought he’d guess that we woke up the next morning . . . but he paused and replied, “Well, then we become carcasses for vultures.”
Yikes. But his point was made. Death is just the way nature works.
My other worry was that the chasing and killing and fighting that is a part of the natural world would result in more aggressive behavior. Wrong again. Martin will catch grasshoppers and frogs, name them (usually “Dengy”), call them “toad-friend” or “grasshopper-friend,” give them water and grass. Then he tells me, “I am going to put my toad-friend back in his natural habitat.” And then, so gently, and with soft words of encouragement, he does.
(Reading this great post in My Fairbanks Life about childhood wisdom regarding nature and life cycles got me thinking about this subject…)
Mothers:
Today my sister and I brought dinner to a woman who just had a baby. She lives in a giant house, brand new. The problems she speaks of the most, publicly at least, revolve around the new stove acting up and an incorrectly laid teak floor. On the way home, we stopped at the drugstore, and while waiting in the parking lot, I saw another mother, still in her fast-food restaurant apron, rushing into the store while clutching a two year old in her arms. Her hair flying, her face splotchy, her car dented and rusted.
Jackasses:
On the way home from the drugstore, we waited at a red light and watched two men in a truck try to get the attention of a woman in a convertible next to them. She glanced over at them as they leaned out the window and shouted to her, then she quickly looked straight ahead. They continued to yell to her, laughing and hanging out their windows over her car. She kept pulling up, trying to get away without escaping into a crush of speeding traffic.
Predator:
That evening, I went to the grocery store, the fanciest one in my little suburban bubble. But it was dark, and when I pulled into the parking spot in a distant part of the lot, I noticed a man sitting alone in the car next to me. I thought, ‘No way. Park somewhere else.’ Then, ‘Grow up. He’s just a man in a car.’ But he was a man sitting alone in a car in a dark parking lot, and when I made eye contact with him . . . he seemed creepy. I moved. (He was probably a saint–waiting to pick up a friend or partner so she wouldn’t have to walk through that same dark parking lot.) Why did I assume predator?
The little one didn’t nap, fussed all day, wouldn’t take a bath, wouldn’t eat, and now wouldn’t go to sleep, and as I was trying with all my might to get him to change his mind, the older one sat down next to me and put his head on my shoulder. I thought, I swear, if he riles up this damn baby, or makes him wake up, or . . .” when he said, “Mom, my heart has a lot of love for you and it’s floating up to my ears and coming out my mouth and my toes. Look.” And he opened his mouth and raised his toes in the air.
Thank you, little Martin.
Let me get out of my head when things seem overwhelming; seeing two little boys with love dripping from their toes makes it better.
After coming home with my first baby, every night I would settle down watching television or listening to a book on tape and just sit there. Martin would sleep in my arms, and only in my arms. Every well-meaning person who heard this had a new solution: put him down drowsy, play wave sounds, take a ride in the car . . . you probably know all of them already. But, I swear, no matter what, he would remain asleep only in my arms. I gave up, and just stayed up and held him. He nursed and slept, slept and nursed.
Until that wonderful day when my husband came home with a broken knee.
I guess it wasn’t a broken knee, but something bad happened to it, and I’m not his doctor so I’m not responsible for knowing the details. I was woozy from having a baby three weeks earlier and not sleeping since. At some point, I do remember a surgery, and then some guy carrying a big knee machine into our house, hooking my husband up to it, and instructing him to stay on the couch downstairs. I also remember looking at the empty king-sized bed, and realized that since this little bundle of baby couldn’t go anywhere, maybe he could sleep there. Maybe he would sleep for just a few minutes next to me instead of in my arms if I got really close to him . . . and then it was 6:00 am.
And that’s how I invented co-sleeping. I thought I sort of did, actually, because I had yet to realize, from friends or the internet or books, that people actually did it. Let alone that it was being done for untold years around the world. I just hadn’t thought about it. Why didn’t someone suggest that to me along with the hair dryer and vacuum cleaner sounds?
I figured it out once I found myself lying about doing it. Co-sleeping can be as unpopular with some as it can be life-saving for others. You’ll never get him out of your bed . . . he’ll never wean . . . he’ll never learn to sleep by himself . . . when I heard that enough from some people, I just stopped talking about it–unless I was talking to someone who might have cause to try it or if I was in the mood to really discuss it.
It was an early lesson in doing what feels right, despite what others say (even the pediatrician sometimes) and in looking beyond my circle to trusted sources elsewhere. I needed to find my own parenting advice and support niche. (Thank you, Dr. Sears–this is when I found you.)
I think that even my husband will agree: the broken knee thing was worth the sleeping baby.