Okay, sometimes I lose sight (only for an instant, of course) of just what cool and excellent people my children are. When they are refusing to _____________ (pretty much any phrase will do here), or when they are in the throes of a full-frontal drama attack, or when they make me feel like I don’t know what the hell I’m doing—in those moments I can’t see the forest for the trees. I just blunder around, the high-priestess of self absorption and annoyance, attempting (without success) to sigh my way out of the conflict. Inevitably though, some seemingly small gesture or word from one of my kids skyrockets me into the blue, just below the cloud-line, and I finally see that lush and fertile forest in all of it’s depth and glory, as if for the first time.
Case in point: our trip to the doctor today. My son has had crazy high fevers for nearly a week, fevers that manifest themselves most pointedly in the wee hours of the morning (105 degrees at 3:30am is no party for anyone involved). The poor boy has been a trooper throughout, sweating and hotter than anything that isn’t actually on fire reasonably should be, yet polite and sweet in his request for yet another change of dry pajamas. It’s been a roller coaster ride of he’s-better-he’s-worse and so we had to make another trip to the pediatrician, and had to drag his sister along for the ride.
She was whining and dragging her heels from the moment she was appraised of the doctor plan, staunchly declaiming, “I’m NOT going. I WILL NOT go,” even as we made our way to the car. She hemmed and hawed in the backseat, sighing repeatedly and loudly (where’d she get that?), all the way to the waiting room. She managed to reign it in for the public good, but once the visit was over and we returned to the car, her crabbiness was ressurected. I’m driving, trying to remain neutral (She’s had a long day at school, of course she doesn’t want to get dragged to the doctor, who would? Sure, I get it. She needs her dinner, she probably didn’t eat her lunch again or drink enough today and this is how it goes…but I wish she’d f*ing can it already). Somehow, we all make it to the front door in one emotional piece, and then she says, “gluey martin is a little tiny ghost.”
“What?” I say.
She repeats herself.
I am delighted by this sentence. “That sounds like the start of a poem,” I say.
Her eyes light up and she says, “His favorite food is jam on toast!” (slight pause) “I’m going to write the rest of it!” She kicks off her shoes in a way most joyful (and without hitting anyone) and runs to the kitchen, where all such things are created. She returns moments later (seriously, moments) with this, written out in her charming, 7-year-old hand:
Gluey Martin, the little tiny ghost
poem by MMG
Gluey Martin is a little tiny ghost.
His favorite food is jam on toast.
He sneaks around at ten o’clock.
When you see him he gives you a shock.
One night he scared some robbers away
By saying he would kill them if they wanted to stay.
So if you see a little tiny ghost
Don’t be afraid. It’s just Gluey Martin.
I am stunned by its completeness and its mix of the whimsical and the sinister. She beams up at me, utterly transformed from the quivering pile of complaints that she was ten minutes before into a self-assured second-grader who understands where she fits in the world and how the world fits around her. Now I realize that this poem isn’t Yeats or Elliot or Adrienne Rich, but I love it, and so does she. I reminded, not for the first time, of how incredibly creative she is. Art-making has been her friend and her tool almost from birth—by the age of two she understood (unconsciously, of course) that she could process her experiences, the good and the bad, by drawing them or sculpting them and so work out whatever she needed to. A lot of her foul moods can be softened immediately by putting a pen and paper in her hands (why do I not remember this more often?!?).
I am so thankful that she has connected with such a fundamental and powerful communication tool so early in her life. May she never become disconnected from it. I guess it’s our job to ensure she doesn’t, at least for the first 18 years.
