For my post this week, I have again excerpted a set of short vignettes from letters I wrote decades ago. These vignettes capture moments with my children when they were young. I hope they bring a smile and remind you of times with your kids.
The Concert
I am being entertained.
Jessica, Theresa, and I are sitting at the kitchen table. Each of us has a glass of soda in front of us. I had assumed that we were going to drink the soda and that, other than knocking the glass over, drinking the soda was about the only thing one could do with a glass of soda.
But I have been enlightened.
Jessica raised the glass, brought the soda to her lips, and began to hum. Small bubbles and awkward harmonics. And giggles. Theresa followed suit.
A concert began. The duo was willing to entertain requests and showed their creativity with several original compositions. Jingle Bells was brilliantly performed. There was some confusion between the musicians over the exact tune for America the Beautiful. They’re not quite ready for prime time but the talent level is clear.
Humming into a glass of soda. One of those innocuous, genuinely forgettable moments. This is not a graduation, birthday party, or school play event. One doesn’t find a couple of pages in the scrap book devoted to events like this. Just a regular, “they’re being kids” event. In two weeks, no one will remember it. But events like this, hundreds of them over the course of the years, are the bone and muscle of the shared experiences and bonds between children and parents.
The Absence of Logic
In the next room, for the last 15 minutes, Denise, arms folded, and voice focused, has been having the following conversation with Theresa, fidgeting, crawling up and over the sofa.
A classic parent-kid conversation:
Theresa: Mom, I need new clothes!
Denise: Well, why don’t you come shopping with me when I go with Jessica?
Theresa: I don’t want to go shopping.
Denise: Well, how can we get you new clothes if you don’t go shopping?
Theresa: I don’t know. I don’t want to go shopping. I just want new clothes.
Denise: I can’t get you clothes if you won’t come shopping.
Theresa: I don’t care. I just want clothes, and I won’t go shopping.
Etc. And, if you look at the above and define the mathematical function which describes the conversation, you would see that logically that conversation will never end and never make progress. So, you do what all good moms do at that point.
You walk out of the room to let the kid think about it for a bit.
Julia’s soccer team played a game that ended in a tie; they tied in the last 15 seconds.
The tying goal was scored by a kid who had just moved to town and was put on the team not knowing anybody. The team accepted her, but she was shy. Not a physically attractive kid, she was an OK player but not a star. She scored the final goal and was mobbed by the rest of the team, screaming and high fiving.
She had her moment in the sun on the team, the hero. The parents on the sideline murmured their approval; certainly of the tie but more for Sarah O’Malley and that they lived in a just and good world where moments like this happened every now and then.
A Brief Moment with Theresa
Yesterday, cruising down the aisles in Kmart, Theresa (age 8) reached up and placed her hand in mine, wrapped her fingers around mine. She chattered through this gesture, seemingly oblivious to the gesture.
I felt my heart rate picking up, a grin covering my face and warmth flooding my body.
A kid holding her dad’s hand.
The love I felt for that kid was overwhelming.
I am in the waning months, maybe a year or two at the outside, in which this will occur. Adolescent girls and young women wouldn’t dream of such a gesture. A treasure, that I have been blessed to receive countless times, perhaps taken for granted, will soon go away. Maybe to be replaced by a grandkid grabbing a hand at some future date.
But this treasure, like all of them I guess, will be a memory soon. I’ll miss it.