Wiper Beat

Most days I feel like I’m living in a musical. The kids spontaneously break into song or dance at random moments, and I’m usually happy for their creativity (except when I’m trying to take a  business call). Well, thanks to the influence of beatboxing on the PBS show The Electric Company, and random clips and songs the kids have seen from composer Sxip Shirey, they are often inspired to grab household objects and try coax (i.e. beat) sounds out of them, accompanied by some sort of attempt at beatboxing or singing.

Driving home from school today, the kids were inspired by the windshield wipers in the rain and did the following little number.

They call their composition, Wiper Beat.

Four Eyes

As of this week, my two youngest children now have glasses. They are five and three years old. My heart hurt a little to see them in their new flexible frames at such a young age, even though I suspected they would eventually need glasses (both Mark and I wear glasses).

Going through the process with the kids, I was reminded of my own experiences getting glasses when I was seven. My parents discovered that I needed them when I stopped being able to read street signs (we played a lot of car games as kids). At the optometrist’s urging,  I started wearing contact lenses at the age of 12. Because my prescription kept getting worse, she hoped that the rigid gas permeable lenses would help to keep my eyes from changing so rapidly. It worked.

I’ll never forget that first time I was able to see myself in the mirror without glasses. Up to that point, my reflection was too fuzzy to see. I only saw myself without glasses in photographs. In school, the glasses definitely made me a bit more self-conscious and shy in school. I was already one of the “smart kids” and glasses made me look the part even more.

I can’t help but wonder how the glasses will affect my kids. So far they’ve taken to them, but I wonder how this will change as kids get older, more critical.

I usually only put them on when getting ready for bed or working at home, but I want my kids to feel confident wearing their glasses in public.

Ah, parenting and the baggage we carry with us from our own childhood.

A Strange Kind of Love

On Valentine’s Day, my oldest daughter went ice skating with her second grade class (where one child bloodied his face, another broke a leg, and her teacher broke her wrist). Luckily my husband took off the day to go with her (and to tend to some things around the house that needed his attention). Each of the kids had classroom parties and returned home to spill out their bags of sweets and cards on the kitchen table to examine before picking out one treat to have before dinner.

The booty they brought home rivaled Halloween. So many children pass out goody bags of candy, pencils, erasers, stickers for Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, Christmas, birthdays. I can’t help but think that the holidays lose some of their magic when they morph into differently colored versions of one another.

At this age, the kids still give everyone in their class a card or piece of candy. At this age, they may or may not pick out a special card for a friend or teacher. At this age, they haven’t quite gotten into the romantic part of the holiday and the potential heartache that come with it. At this age, they still like Valentine’s Day.

I know this will change.

Sooner than I like to admit, there will be wide-eyed infatuation and puppy love, as well as heartache and drama and tears. I remember it so well: the years I did not receive a card from the boy I liked or from the girl I thought was my friend, as well as the years when I walked hand-in-hand with someone for a few secret steps, or arm-in-arm with a “best friend.” The moments were fleeting, but they charged Valentine’s Day with hope and the beautiful fantasy of what it mean to be wanted, chosen, special.

I think that’s the hardest part—wanting to be special. Kids have this desire even at a young age, but they still look to their parents, teachers, or other elders to recognize them in some way. It’s when the need for approval turns to the fickle whims of their peers that even more heartache is possible—no—inevitable.

It was during the loneliest days of  Junior High, that I began to write. What had begun as classroom exercises with a wonderful seventh grade teacher who insisted on in-class essays, evolved into my earliest journal writing and poetry. The essays earned praise, while the personal writing was mostly rambling pre-teen angst that I kept to myself. The important lesson for me was that in the absence of a real-life audience or peer group, I had a place to express myself…on the page.

In her new book, The Window’s Story: A Memoir, Joyce Carol Oats writes:

There are those—a blessed lot—who can experience life without the slightest glimmer of a need to add anything to it—any sort of “creative”effort; and there are those—an accursed lot?—for whom the activities of their own brains and imaginations are paramount. The world for these individuals may be infinitely rich, rewarding and seductive—but it is not paramount. The world may be interpreted as a gift, earned only if one has created something over and above the world. (You can read an excerpt here, on Scribd.com.)

She eloquently put into words one of my fears and the conflict I experience daily as I try to balance writing and life. Does writing keep me from living? Does living keep me from writing? Yes and yes, and so I teeter from side-to-side trying to celebrate and experience both. Some days are more successful than others.

My seven-year-old received a Star Wars valentine from the boy she likes. She has recycled all her valentines but that one.

And so it begins.