Lent Photo a Day: Remember

Humans have always used aids to help us remember things. We pretty much invented writing just so we could write stuff down so that we wouldn’t forget it. Cave paintings are, if you stop and think about it, merely the precursors to modern-day Post It notes and Dry Erase boards. I’d bet that every single person reading this has a junk drawer somewhere in their house (probably the kitchen) whose contents consist almost entirely of pens, pencils, and stacks of Post It Notes and notepads. I always have pens in my purse so if a thought occurs to me, I can write it down before it floats away into the ether. We make notes to ourselves on napkins, the backs of envelopes, desk blotters, and random scraps of paper, all just to help us remember. 

Our homes are also filled with things, with objects, that help us remember stuff. We hang photographs on the wall and keep them in albums to help us remember important moments like graduations and weddings. We collect mementos and souvenirs from our travels: a carved trinket from here, a silver spoon from there, a ceramic something from somewhere else. We save ticket stubs, wedding invitations, theatre playbills, and greeting cards.

But for most parents, the most meaningful objects in our homes that help us to remember are the random bits of artwork that our children have made over the years. A painted mug, a paper Santa, a worksheet from school. They help us remember that frozen moment in time when our children were that certain age. Children change so quickly, right before our eyes, so we desperately cling to each reminder of where they are right now. My favorite bits of art are the ones that capture the size of their tiny hands and feet, because I know that as soon as I blink they won’t be that small any more.

When I look at my kids, sometimes it’s hard for me to imagine that they’ll ever be adults. But then I look back at my cherished bits of art and I remember how much they’ve already grown, and I know that before I know it they will be grown and independent. Rodgers and Hammerstein expressed it beautifully in the lyrics to the song “I Know It Can Happen Again” from their little-known musical, Allegro:

Starting out so foolishly small, it’s hard to believe you will grow at all.
It’s hard to believe that things like you can ever turn out to be men.
But I’ve seen it happen before, so I know it can happen again.
Food and sleep and plenty of soap, molasses and sulfur and love and hope,
The winters go by, the summers fly, and all of a sudden you’re men!
I have seen it happen before, so I know it can happen again. 

Someday my children will be grown, and their tiny hands and feet will be only a memory. But I will still have their artwork to help me remember.

Remember.

What a Difference a Year Makes

I'm sure I've blogged on this topic before. I've probably even used this exact title before. But when you have small children, you are struck again and again by how much they grow and change (and by how much they change YOU) over the course of 12 months.

One year ago, my then just-turned-2-year-old daughter began taking gymnastics classes. And, like her brother before her, she was a trial to her teacher. Even with me by her side, she didn’t listen, she didn’t follow her classmates, she wanted to play on every piece of equipment except the one she was supposed to be playing on. I spent more time chasing her around the gym than actually doing exercises with her.

She did improve over the course of the year, at least to the point where I was able to get her to cooperate by telling her to instead of by physically chasing her around or bodily picking her up and slinging her into line with the other kids. But I couldn’t imagine what it would be like putting her in a class without me by her side after three months of being away from class.

Well, here it is the next fall, and her second week of class without me. I’d be lying if I said she was perfectly behaved. I would be lying if I said she paid attention to her teacher all the time. I’d be lying if I said she wasn’t the least focused child in the class a good bit of the time. But I’d also be lying if I said the improvement wasn’t far above and beyond what I’d ever imagined or even hoped.

She runs right into the warmup circle at the start of class. She sits when she’s told to sit (most of the time), she gets into line with everyone else (some of the time), she waits patiently for her turn (occasionally – although she does at least wait impatiently a good deal of the time), she listens to what her teacher says and tries to do it (almost all of the time).

Well, she's not standing on her dot, but she's in the general vicinity of the circle,
she's not racing around on other equipment, and she seems to be listening to the
teacher. I'd call that a win.

But best of all, she doesn’t think twice about leaving me behind at the top of the stairs when class begins. She doesn’t look up to the windows during class to reassure herself that I’m still there. And although she’s happy to see me at the end of class, it’s not because she’s upset or scared, but because she can’t wait to tell me all about all the exciting things that she just did.

What a difference a year makes. And viva la difference!!

Trading Places

When I was pregnant with my oldest child, I heard a lot of old wives’ tales about pregnancy, some of which I’d heard before and some of which were new to me. One of the weirdest ones, and one I hadn’t come across before, was the claim that if a woman develops acne during her pregnancy, she is carrying a girl, and the baby is “stealing her beauty.” There might not be much truth in that particular legend (I had great skin with both my pregnancies, which produced one boy and one girl – who are both, for the record, quite beautiful), but over the course of time, I have discovered that there are a lot of “exchanges” that go on when you have children.

For example, sleep. Babies sleep all the time. Parents get no sleep at all. There is a period of childhood when both children and parents go on to get reasonable amounts of sleep, but then along come the teen years and the parents once again get no sleep while the teens sleep till noon whenever possible. It’s as if the kids are “stealing” their parents’ sleep.

Or how about bodily functions? My children are reaching the age where they are learning to use the bathroom and to “hold it” until they can get to a toilet, while I am reaching the age where I pee whenever I sneeze, or cough, or laugh really hard.

And then there are all the aspects of learning. My children are developing an impressive vocabulary and learning lots of new words, while I am often stuttering and stammering in an attempt to find a word that I am certain I knew five minutes ago. Their ability to read is gaining ground every day, which is a good thing because I am finding that I can no longer read without taking off my glasses or holding the book at arms’ length, or both.

Speaking of glasses, I recently discovered that threading a needle is much more difficult than it used to be, so it’s pretty convenient that my children are developing their fine motor skills enough that by the time I can no longer do it at all, they’ll be able to do it for me.

I suspect they’ll also be doing lots of technological stuff for me in the near future, as well. They’re starting to learn how computers and phones and tablets and mp3 players and all kinds of new technologies work, just as I am beginning to be baffled by the newfangled inventions that came so naturally to me in the past.

I suppose it’s all a part of handing things over to the next generation. We, as parents, find it difficult to let go and allow our children to take charge, so humans are designed to begin to fail just as our children are coming into maturity. We have no choice but to allow the next generation to step in and use their new-found skills to replace the skills we are slowly but inexorably losing.

I know that there are many years before my children have the skills, maturity, and experience to take their adult place in the world, and that there are many years before I lose enough skills that I truly need their assistance, but I hope that it’s a graceful transition. I hope that I can use the interim to let my children take baby steps to build their confidence in their abilities. I think I’ll start by making sure my kids know how to tie shoes. After all, my own feet seem to be getting further and further away.

Sneaky Milestones

Every parent watches for milestones in their child’s development. There are many obvious milestones, particularly with small babies: the first time they roll over, or sit up without help, or take those first tentative steps. Some milestones come a bit more gradually: learning to talk or read or ride a bike or use the toilet, or outgrowing a car seat or a high chair. Some of them are specific events, like the first day of school, or the first sleepover at a friend’s house, or senior prom, or going away to college. But there are many other milestones that are more subtle, but equally as powerful in reminding parents that their children are growing up. They’re the milestones that sneak up on you.

I hit one of those sneaky milestones the other day when my son and I came inside after playing in the snow. After I hung up my coat in the closet, instead of hanging my son’s parka on the hook when I usually put it, without thinking I grabbed another coat hanger and put his coat on it. As I was reaching to hang the hanger on the rod next to my own coat, it suddenly struck me: My son is grown-up enough that his clothes fit on adult-sized hangers.

There are other sneaky milestones that you often don’t think about until they’ve passed. Things like not having to hold your child’s hand in the parking lot because you can trust him to stay close to you. Not having to remind her to say please and thank you. Letting them play in the yard unsupervised. Leaving them in a room with an open box of crayons knowing you won’t come back to graffiti on the walls. Realizing that the subjects of their paintings are recognizable as people or animals or houses. These are the sneaky milestones that can easily slip past without notice. But they are still hallmarks of development, quiet proclamations that your child is growing up right in front of you.

My son is only three years old, but already I find myself looking back at his baby pictures and wondering where the time went. My mind boggles that in the short span of three years, he has transformed from a personality-less (but adorable) lump into an articulate, interesting, polite, smart young man.

Whose clothes fit onto adult-sized hangers. Wow.

June 23 Photo: Movement

Today’s photo is a bit of a cheat, because I didn’t take it. (And I can’t lie about that fact, because I am clearly in the picture.) But since movement is really difficult to depict and since I love the way this photo captures it, I’m going to give my husband credit for taking it and post it anyway.

Most of the photographs that I take trying to capture movement just end up as blurs. (And with my kids, most of the photographs that I take are trying to capture movement!) I can’t blame it on my camera, because my husband used my camera to take this photo. Maybe he knows some special setting that I don’t (likely) or maybe he just has a better eye than I (extremely likely). But whatever technique he used, this photo captures movement exactly the way I wanted to capture it.

If you look closely at the lower left-hand side of the photograph, right under the surface of the water you can just make out the flesh-colored blur that is my son immediately post-belly-flop. He loves to stand on the side of the pool and hurl himself in, spread-eagled, in order to make the maximum splash possible. It takes an amazingly quick shutter finger to catch him mid-air, since he gives zero warning that he’s about to jump, so most of the photos of him jumping into the pool look a lot like this one.

And that’s a pretty good illustration of life with a 2-1/2-year-old boy: You rarely see the event, just the aftermath. You find the Legos strewn all over the living room after the 3-foot-tall tower crashes down. You mop up the puddle of soapy water on the bathroom floor after the tub toys have had an epic (and splashy) battle. You rescue the child with his head trapped between the bars of the fence after he squeezes the rest of his body through (photo below for those of you who missed it).

Yup, life with a 2-1/2 year old boy is pretty much constant movement – yours, his, toys, and time. It’s nice to have a photograph every now and then to freeze the action so you don’t miss it completely. Because you can’t stop the movement of the child or of the clock.

Sunrise, Sunset

With its poignant lyrics and haunting melody, the song "Sunrise, Sunset" from the musical "Fiddler on the Roof" is arguably one of the most moving songs ever written. No wonder it's played so often at weddings, usually to accompany the father-daughter or mother-son dance. "When did she get to be a beauty? When did he grow to be this tall? Wasn't it yesterday when they were small?" Time flies by so fast and children grow so quickly from infants to toddlers to youngsters to adults. Some of the wisest parenting advice I've gotten was from my mom, who got it from her mom: "Don't try to rush them into the next stage. Just enjoy each moment as it is."

This seems like simple enough advice at first, but I'm finding it more difficult than I expected. When Ryan began to focus on my face, I eagerly looked forward to his first smile. When he began to smile, I looked forward to his first giggle. When he giggled, I couldn't wait for him to belly-laugh. I have to consciously stop myself from thinking "I can't wait until he..." and enjoy what he's doing right now. Because what he's doing right now is amazing! Sure, it will be great when he can sit up by himself. But how much do I love watching his bobblehead attempts to gain control of his own head? How exciting is it to watch him follow Daddy with his eyes as he's propped up on our bed in the morning while we're getting dressed? What a wonderful feeling it is when he's on my shoulder, working hard to hold his head up and take in everything in the room, but then he drops his head and nuzzles into my neck, exhausted from the effort. Those sweet moments will be gone so quickly, I want to savor each one as it happens, not look past it in anticipation of the next stage.

I am so fortunate to live in an age of digital photography and cheap video cameras so we can record these fleeting moments and savor them again and again. It astonishes me how quickly I forgot how tiny Ryan was when we brought him home from the hospital - but I have dozens of photos of his first few days at home and a video of his birth to remind me. I will never forget seeing his first dimpled smile, but I can share that image with others because I have photos of that smile. I can even picture the day, a few years from now, when I show Ryan his baby book and all the photos of his earliest days.

But I won't think about that too much yet. I'm too busy enjoying the here and now.