Lisin To The wind Bloe

Posted September 07, 2007

0 |

I found this helpful Thank You! Your vote will be tallied soon!

Last week I found, buried under the leaning tower of my to-be-filed papers, a poem that Ben wrote exactly one year ago.

Lets Go Done to
Dreem Land tooge
-Ther And Go in The
MaJick WorLD
Farees sworL
urond you
as we Lisin To The wind
Bloe

Since the sight of, say, a toenail clipping can fill my crazy eyes with tears, it's no surprise that I fell into weepy nostalgia. The difference in this kid between six and seven is just totally boggling: last year Ben's writing was a study in the intricate relationship between spelling and the imagination, between lower and uppercase letters, between an innocent heart and its beautiful, poetic expression. And now -- well, let's just say I had a great opportunity to mark Ben's development when, after he and a friend disappeared from a dinner party for giggling, hilarity-fueled hours, I went upstairs to use the bathroom and found their colorful, tub-crayoned graffiti all over the shower:

unapropereute words
beginner
poop
pee
toilit

advanced
penis
buty

swares
ideeut
stupid
dumb

Ben crept in as I was marveling over their excellent handwriting and turned promptly red. "Are you angry?" he asked, and when I smiled and said, "Not at all," he said, "I didn't actually think you would be." "What's this crossed-out part?" I asked, and he blushed some more. "Worse swears," he said, "ones I thought would really make you angry." Upon closer inspection I could just make them out: for god sake and krap.

Not krap! I filled with rage!!! Or rather, I bit the insides of my cheeks to keep myself from laughing. "Those must have been pretty bad ones," I said evenly, and he said, "Oh believe me -- they were!"

Ben, bless him, is dabbling in a bit of gentle hooliganism. It's complicated, isn't it? How we feel when our kids stretch their wings? It starts when they're toddlers, and we're totally cheering them on as their spirits brighten and flare, even though it's such an incredible pain in the buty. "Wow, you really don't want to put your shoes on!" we say. We say, "You're so passionate about that cigarette butt in the sand box! You really wanted to chew it to smithereens!" We rejoice in their emerging selves even as we miss our placid, grinning babies -- and it's a process, I'm seeing now, that just goes on and on. Ben has been a supremely sunny and easy-going child, and he still is -- only suddenly he's flexing his independence. And I treasure this expansion even as I can't quite let go of the age of innocence. But I know he's doing exactly what he should be: pushing to see where the boundaries are.

"You're pushing to see where the boundaries are," I said to him yesterday after he told me that one of his excellent teachers had spoken to him about an unappropriate comment (booger) he'd made at school. "That's how everyone learns what they can and can't do. Even grown-ups still learn that way." But oh, I have such mixed feelings. I can't write the whole story here, but it's really a first, this getting-spoken-to event, however gently it occurred, and it's both small potatoes and big potatoes at the same time. I feel glad and sorry. "You don't have to be perfect," I said to Ben. "Daddy and I don't even want you to be." "I know that," he said. "I actually know that."

Of course, I can rise to this kind of capital-p Parenting Occasion. It's the everyday that challenges me, since I am such a controlling, irritable ideeut. When Ben sits down to dinner, for instance, and says in the faintest dialect of brattiness, "Do I have to eat all of this?" I snap at him. "I worked hard to make that," I say, pulling my maternal martyrdom around me like a cloak, and Ben digs guiltily in. To the yam and hominy stew. Which is what we're talking about here. Which even Michael looks a little glum about. I mean, really! If you can't be a little bit bratty about yam and hominy stew, what can you be bratty about? (Later Ben asked suddenly, "Is this like 'Puff the Magic Dragon'? A land called ho-miny?" and Birdy answered, "Yes, Ben. It is.")

This is the easy part, I know. Where they're so innocently naughty it breaks your heart -- their pink-cheeked outlaw behavior. And I will doubtless think even more fondly of this time one day while I'm watching the children defend polygamous bestiality on the Jerry Springer show. But for now, well, one minute they're saying "booty crack" on line at the bank, the next they're giving you a centimeter-tall book made from stapled Post-its that says "I love you, Mama" on every page.

"I actually love this!" Ben yelled from the bathroom, where he was standing in the tub, successfully scrubbing the sware-coated walls with Bon Ami. "It's like something that would happen in a book! The kids are bad and then they fix it." "It's actually supposed to make you feel like maybe you'd think twice before doing it again," I explained, and he said, "Oh, I see. Then I'm not sure it's working." But here in the majick world -- well, everything's probably working just fine.

Dish with Dalai Mama: Visit the Dish with Dalai Mama community group to chat about this recipe, upload photos of your cooking, connect with Catherine, and more! Go to Group

Member Comments On...

Lisin To The wind Bloe

Account Warning

Dalai Mama Dishes

by Catherine Newman

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

Dalai Mama Dishes

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

Lisin To The wind Bloe

Member Comments On...