Mother's Day, Part 1: An Idyllic Time

There has been magic in my family this year. I turned around the other day and caught sight of it. Good thing, too. I might have missed it entirely.

My Sonars are getting bigger, getting more independent, doing more and more things to take care of themselves and to take care of me.

In August, Sonar X7 started going to and from school on his own, on his bike. I’ve facilitated his transfer only a handful of times, during rain and illness. After a couple of weeks of anxiety, in which we followed shortly behind him to make sure he didn’t need to be scraped off the sidewalk, the pride settled in for me. I was proud that he was able to negotiate the bike, the helmet, the backpack, the half-mile, the crossing of the big street, the parking, the locking, and the satisfaction of arriving under his own power. His joy at going fast, or slow, or meandering, or whatever way he decided to go, was so apparent and so infectious.

One consequence of his independence was the other two Sonars not having to get up and get ready as early in the morning. Through kindergarten and first grade for Sonar X7, we all got up at the same time, all ate breakfast, all rushed and flurried out the door to walk or drive up to the school. Then the preschool pack and I would come back and settle into our routine. Now though, Sonar X7 is up and off before the other two even crawl out of bed. So our mornings start off quietly and gently, sometimes one at a time. I love this because there are unexpected moments of quiet snuggling, sleepy morning questions and dreams.

Another consequence of Sonar X7’s independence is that the rest of us get a leisurely quiet time in the afternoon, not interrupted by the packing up and heading off to school to pick him up. So we each settle into a spot with books or puzzles, or as often as not for me, the computer, for a while. Some of us sometimes go to sleep. Then we wake up and color or draw until Sonar X7 gets home. Our afternoon then tumbles into a flurry of snacks, homework, and playing outside until dinnertime.

Tucked away in the spaces in between, Sonar X5 is learning to read. Watching him figure out the way the letters and words work to make meaning is one of the coolest things ever. I’ve been here before with the biggest Sonar, but it’s still magic. Each of them has stumbled toward literacy in his own way. Sonar X7’s reading acquisition reminded me of childbirth. It came later than I expected, and then it was sudden and messy and violent and then he was a reader. Now he reads anything and everything he can lay his hands on. His bed table holds the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and encyclopedia of the weird, a comic book, and he’s lying in bed reading Dragonrider by Cornelia Funke. Sonar X5 is sneaking up on literacy. Quietly working out the words that are all around him. Cereal boxes. Some of his books. An activity page here or there. A question about how something is spelled or pronounced. And now he can read all the words on a kindergarten readiness page. He can read most of the words in a few books, partly from working them out and partly from memory. And it’s so delicious to watch how patiently and hard he works at it. Shaping the words in his mouth, listening inside his head, then smiling proudly when realization hits. This is not to say that he doesn’t get frustrated. But he doesn’t let the frustration overwhelm him. When he gets tired, he walks away, knowing in his quiet way that tomorrow he will try again.

In other quiet spaces, Sonar X3 is wondering where he fits in all of this. Nothing so dramatic as learning to read, though he is discovering that he knows most of his letters and numbers, and that feels good to him. He is figuring out how to draw lines and shapes with more intention, which he finds funny. His development though is focused now on the emotional. He sees the things that his siblings are doing, and tries to understand it. He is bold, and a combination of our encouragement and his personality has mostly kept him from being babied by the other kids and most of their friends. But the gulf that separates them is spreading right now. Reading, and very soon kindergarten for Sonar X5 will stretch that gap even farther. And I think Sonar X3 is feeling a little sad about that, though he’s not yet capable of expressing it. I don’t know how this will work itself out, how the two of us will negotiate our time when the older kids go off to school together in August. But I’m excited to figure it out.

Next school year we will likely return to all rising together to accompany Sonar X5 to school. I think there’s a very good chance that he won’t want my company for as long as Sonar X7 did. Seven was forging a new path, with all the anxiety and excitement that entailed. Five sees how his brother has gone before, and has a better idea of what to do. Perhaps after a time the two of them will go off together without me and Three. Three will follow suit in two years, going off on his own kindergarten adventure. And my patterns, my negotiations and requirements will shift again.

I am feeling profoundly lucky today, as a mom, for this right now. For the reading, for the independence, for the emotional development, for the relatively calm and quiet transitions, for having time with each kid that is just mine and theirs. For being able to be here and see it with the confidence that our family is secure, that Partner and I are in agreement about how we want things to work, that each of us is doing our share on the team as we all grow together.

Happy Mother’s Day to all of the beautiful women out there, wherever you are in your negotiation of life.

Potpourri

In no meaningful order, I’m throwing a little grab bag at you for today.

~The smaller Sonars and I recently watched Mary Poppins. The movie was so much more dreadfully boring and weird than I remembered, but we all loved the songs. Sonar X5, in particular, has reveled in deploying the tunes with his own new and delightful body (bawdy) lyrics. No, not gonna share those. But I will share that Sonar X3 can’t seem to call the movie by it’s right name. He calls it Harry Poppins every time. No matter what we tell him. Cracks me up every time. It might help to know that we’ve been reading all of the Harry Potter books out loud. Anywhere from a few pages to a chapter each day for the last YEAR. We have six chapters left of book 7. Harry Poppins. Just a spoonful of magic makes the dark lord go doooown, dark lord go down.

~We went to a minor league baseball game last weekend. The Corpus Christi Hooks are part of the Houston Astros farm system. We had a great time, got a little sunburned and ate burgers after. I loved it. The Sonars were less enthusiastic this time, not sure why. But a baseball stadium always makes me a bit nostalgic for high school. I spent four summers during my teens working as an usher and ticket seller for the Albuquerque Dukes. Great, though often peculiar fun was had. My old team is no longer the Dukes, by the way. They’re now the Isotopes. Because of the national lab-space-military industrial complex in New Mexico? Because of the Trinity site out in the eastern part of the state? Because someone in power is a big fan of The Simpsons? Anyway, minor league baseball games are good fun. Free tickets and special deals often abound if you hunt for them. And you get to experience a lot of the pomp and fanfare of the big leagues for a lot less money. We got Craig Biggio commemorative figurines on our visit. No, I don’t really know who he is either.

~It’s new underwear weekend around here. I handle a lot of laundry and decided finally that the state of everyone’s underwear was just really rather sad. So it was comfort waist boxer-briefs for two Sonars (the third Sonar has really lovely underwear, mainly because he never wears any). Soft, stretchy cotton bikinis for me. Partner’s were also ok, because he replenished the underwear stock a few weeks ago—grey and blue boxer-briefs. I also plan to get a couple of bras. I put on one yesterday and the underwire sprung out and punctured my armpit. Ok, not punctured, but you know what I mean. That leaves me with two industrial sports bras, one bra with a poking out underwire, one with a bent underwire, and way way back in the back of my drawer, three nursing bras that, though I’ve not been nursing any babies for some time, still hang out back there. So let’s just say that it’s time for me to do a little drawer-cleaning and that a couple of pretty bras that don’t necessarily have nipple-flaps might be nice. ;)

~Three more days to sexy new computer. Though apologies are in order for this lovely old gal. It wasn’t her fault at all that the computer wasn’t connecting to the internet properly. It was the evil old phone company. Gr.

~We’re in the throes of deciding on our new internet service provider. We can choose between pricey local company with wireless network and cheaper evil cable empire. You might think that the evil epithet means I will choose the local company, but the decision is not that easy. The cost and the contract and the slightly slower connection add up against them, especially the long contract. Against the cable company: we don’t currently have cable service, and if we opt to keep it that way, we pay a $10 surcharge for having only broadband service. Jerks. Pluses for big cable: speed, no service charge, no gigantic equipment to install. Pluses for the two lovable geeks down the street: personal service by actual human beings, supporting the local economy, and not taking the fast food option and joining the evil empire. Tough call.

~The squirrels around our place are going crazy. Our house, yard, trees, and fences are like this gigantic racetrack right now. They chase each other everywhere, up down around over across. Zoom zoom zoom. Spring fever? Mating time? Nut wars?

~I love the end of a bag of tortilla chips, the crunchy bits down in the bottom. I pour them into a bowl and dollop some salsa on top and eat them with a spoon. The very best part are the bits that get just a teensy bit soggy by the time I get to them. Good stuff.

~So, I knew I was sick. Really sick for a while. At least I thought I knew. And then I got better. And was completely shocked to find out just how sick I had been. It didn’t hit me until I really felt better that I had been so horribly, deeply, miserably sick. Breathing in particular is good. Nice, deep, cough-free, wheeze-free breaths. Breathing makes everything else so much easier to do.

~Partner picked a gallon of ripe cherry tomatoes out of the back yard this morning. No exaggeration. A gallon. He thinks that there are at least three or four more gallons of tomatoes out there on the verge of being ripe. Want some tomatoes?

~Sonar X7 has three more weeks of school. And a birthday coming up. This computer is older than he is.

~We’re having a gorgeous, sweaty Saturday. It’s 83.1F/28.4C with 83% humidity right now, according to Weather Underground. We should get another handful of degrees yet. I’ll try not to melt into the pavement on my way to a shady spot under the tree where I plan to knit (Gryffindor socks for Sonar X7) or read (Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris) while the Sonars build a fort under the yard table and throw things out of the tree at each other.

What are you up to?

Be the Grouch

Drythe has something good to say about Oscar here. She is right about Sesame Street doing a better job with a range of human emotions than most children’s shows these days. On most shows, emotions seem to be flat and sanitary, simple and without a lot of passion (good or bad). When was the last time you saw a show for young people that included a kid really popping their cork in anger? When, any of you who are around kids regularly, was the last time you saw an actual kid pop his or her cork in anger? Uh huh.

Even the saccharin sweet Sesame Street characters have complicated feelings. Elmo (red monster) and Zoe (orange monster in tutu) are good friends and play together often. Zoe has a pet rock named, wait for it, Rocco, and she takes Rocco’s feelings very seriously. Rocco has to get his turn on the swings and put in his two cents about what they play. Elmo loves Zoe, but he gets very frustrated with the rock. It is, as Elmo finally yells at Zoe, Just a Rock!!! This interchange deals with Elmo’s initial annoyance, which builds to frustration and finally erupts into anger, and then, with the intervention of a kind adult, the reconciliation of the two monster friends. Now, yes, it’s oversimplified and tidy, but, as Drythe points out, the story happens in about twenty minutes. And if you’ve ever seen two siblings squabble about how to play and what to play, you know that fights often take a similar course, and that few minutes after an eruption of hurt feelings, yelling, and tears, they often are right back to giggling and rolling on the floor.

Oscar is another example of a character who consistently portrays emotions on the grouchy end of the spectrum. And as I pointed out before, he’s not a “bad guy,” nor is anyone else on Sesame Street. When was the last time you saw a “bad guy” on a children’s show? When was the last time you had a face-to-face with your nemesis on the street? Oscar is gruff, grouchy, direct, somewhat intolerant, but he’s also loving, generous, stable, resourceful. He gently reads a bedtime story and tucks in Slimy every night. He chuckles and says he just loves to see the little guy sleep.

I can think of a lot of other storylines on Sesame Street that have addressed jealousy (Baby Bear with his new sister), fear (Abby Cadabby (sp?) getting ready for her first day of school, the big wind that destroyed Big Bird’s nest), obsession (Telly and his triangle collection), silliness (The Honker, Duckie, Dinger Jamboree—say that five times fast, I dare ya), not to mention the treatment of specific life events. Elmo’s dad is deployed to Iraq. Families grow. Parents go to work. Friends fight. People die (anyone remember when Mr. Hooper died? Sigh.) And I don’t even see the show regularly.

The preternaturally calm adults are still there. Though, to be fair, the grown-ups do sometimes get annoyed, flustered, and impatient, though in muted ways. They are sometimes busy. But they do try their best to be supportive of the little characters around them.

As a sort of aside, one of the genius things that the show did from the very first episode in 1969, make the monsters lovable. I can recall a time when Sonar X7 was dreaming or worried about monsters, and I reminded him that Elmo and Cookie Monster were monsters, so we knew that all monsters aren’t bad or scary. It was such a handy tool in reassuring him to be able to think of the good monsters he knew and loved.

Ha. So, I started off this post thinking, Drythe has a good point, Sesame Street is doing ok with emotion. And as I’ve gone on, I’ve talked myself into believing that the show is really doing a great job. And now you should go write a letter to your federal representatives and tell them that you want to continue to support public broadcasting in our country (if I recall, a funding vote on public broadcasting in the U.S. is coming up soon). Participate in this civic enterprise because you can.

I Love Trash

I will be 35 later this year, and so I was a preschooler in the grand old days when Sesame Street was golden and relatively new, and was really teaching kids how to read and be socially literate. You know, back when the show was vaguely “dangerous” because it was sort of gritty, and open, and full of characters with “personality disorders”? I was obsessed with the show. I had a Big Bird alarm clock (‘Wake up, Wake up, you sleepyhead! It’s time to get up, get out of bed!’). A blue furry Cookie Monster coat with googly eyes on the hood. And of course, books, an Ernie, and other toys.

My kids aren’t so much interested in Sesame Street most of the time. But when we watch it now, I always have this vaguely bland taste in my mouth, knowing how dilute it is compared to when I watched it as a child. Knowing that the corporate sponsorships of the show indicate the shift from educating urban children who might otherwise have preparation gaps, to entertaining affluent suburban children.

Like all public television programming today, Sesame Street and the Children’s Television Workshop mostly pay their own way compared to when I was young. The one major government grant of Sesame Street is “Ready to Learn Grant from the U.S. Department of Education,” a part of No Child Left Behind. But seriously, the curricular content of Sesame Street isn’t what it once was. Besides teaching me to read, I know friends who, along with their families, learned how to speak English by watching the show. I just don’t see how that would be possible now. Go watch it and tell me what you think.

But this is not about the state of public television in America, nor about Sesame Street in general. This is a post about Oscar the Grouch.

Here is his theme as I recall it:

“I love trash. Anything dingy or dirty or dusty. Anything ragged or wrinkled or rusty. Etc.”

I’m sure you can find the rest of it out there somewhere in the ether.

Oscar was of course that scruffy green monster from Sesame Street, who kept a pet worm (Slimy) and a pet elephant (I can’t recall the name) in his trash can home. Who growled at the kids, monsters, and muppets to be quiet anytime their jubilance got a little gagging. In promos now, Oscar is often compared to Simon on American Idol, that grouchy dude who we all love because he’s not really bad, he just has a different way of looking at the world and sharing his feelings about it. Ha.

Earlier this week, my Russian friend was telling me about her visit to a live Sesame Street show. One of those vaguely freaky affairs where the muppets are six-feet tall. She and her child liked the show and the different characters, but she didn’t understand Oscar. Wondered about the cultural significance and the value of a song about being grouchy and loving trash. “Is it good,” she wondered, “for kids to love trash and want to live in trash and be trashy? What is this Oscar all about?”

I laughed. Because I wasn’t really sure what to say to her at first.

So how would you explain Oscar to your Russian or Hindi or Martian friend?

Here are some possibilities:

—Oscar represents that part of us that doesn’t want to be polite or couth or tactful and simply speaks his mind when and how he wishes. He offers a counterpoint to the rest of the exceedingly polite and cute muppets. And while he’s not always gentle, he’s not entirely outside the realm of acceptable behavior. Being in touch with your grouchy side is not a bad thing.

—On the issue of trash, Oscar was recycling way back in the day. Back before anyone even talked about recycling, let alone did it at the curb. He saw the value in things that were cast off by other people.

— (I think this is a corollary to my first idea) Oscar represents that part of all of us that likes to get dirty, muddy, and grungy. Who isn’t afraid to put a swimming pool in the living room and go swimming with an elephant.

—Oscar, though his identity deviates from the muppet norm, is confident and firm in his self-identity and the way he wants to live his life. He shows kids that not everybody has to be like Elmo or Ernie. The way the other muppets treat Oscar (generally they greet him with good-natured laughter and love, and rarely get ruffled by his gruffness) also demonstrates that it’s important to respect all of the different monsters in your life.

What do you think? Whither goest the cultural significance of The Grouch?

Digital Tedium

I’ve been having “issues” with the computer. This has made anything remotely to do with this rickety old machine tedious at best, and like banging my head against a brick wall.

(No, dear, I wasn’t talking about you when I said “this rickety old machine.” You’re a good computer and I would never call you rickety. There there.)

Don’t tell the creaky one but there will soon be a sleek and sexy new machine in my life. I am counting the days (five). Flush with the giddiness of making our last car payment, we decided to throw caution to the wind and buy a new computer. High speed internet follows. I can’t wait. But I will have to.

(No, dear, you’re not creaky either. I was talking about my, um—chair. Yes. My chair.)

I will try to get caught up on all of the fascinating blogs I’ve been planning to write. While you wait, with what I’m sure is baited breath, I’ll tell you what’s been bouncing around in my brain.

—Harry Poppins
—Minor League Baseball
—Doing Things the Hard Way
—Reading Magic
—My new attitude toward my children’s germs
—My charmingly ironic partner
—The cultural significance of Oscar the Grouch
—Squirrel Fest
—Wind, wind, windy, wind, wind

Let’s start with Oscar, shall we?