Happy birthday, Boychen

I’ve been sitting here for nearly an hour trying to figure out how to write about Boychen’s third birthday. I start and stop and delete and copy and paste and start again. I want it to be beautiful, the way he is, and I want it to be perfect, the way I think he is, and I want to capture that intangible shiny thing about him, the thing that makes me think of shiny new pennies or dew-drops sparkling in the morning sun or hoar-frost on the trees. My shiny boy.

It astounds me nearly every day how simply happy he is, the way a puppy jumping into a pond after a stick is happy. From my perspective, there was so much sadness in the first nine months – twelve? – of his life, my post-partum depression months, all those days of his that I feel like I missed. So many clouds for so long. And yet this shiny boy.

Who can make a game out of anything.

Who is always doing something.

Always smiling.

This beautiful boy who started his life near sadness just pushed all of that aside and turned out so bright and shiny. It astounds me, sometimes, even today, his happiness. Maybe he is not so special, maybe other people don’t see the shimmer that I see, maybe I only see it because I know, I know, how much of my sadness surrounded him and it seems so exceptional to me that none of it stuck.

How grateful I am for that, how deeply, deeply grateful. How relieved I am, nearly every day, that I did not break him. I missed a lot of his babyhood, but I didn’t break him and he is a happy child and he is three today and he is growing up so fast it makes me weep.

Not the Boychen though, no weeping for him. He can’t wait. For everything, for all of it, he can’t wait. It’s all such a joyous adventure, a great and wonderful thing. What’s not to smile about?

Protected: Thursday Night, Hockey Practice (A Poem)

The Good of Small Things

It’s been cold but clear the past few days and the boys and I have gone into the woods where the pond is suddenly populated by the twenty-odd ducks that winter there. There are mushrooms sprouting everywhere, and the Boychen still calls out “Hey! Look, Memli!” (although he can now pronounce “mushrooms” in English and “Schwemli” in Swiss, he still calls them Memli) as though he’d never seen one before.

The Boychen. How to describe this boy who still cries out “Memli!” a dozen times a day, each one something new to be exclaimed over and enjoyed? This boy who, if I turn my back, will be half-way to the road on his tricycle, speeding off towards the Quartier and the world beyond it. This boy with a soul like a shiny new penny, who is growing up too fast, who wants wants wants life.

My little boy, who will not tolerate being called a little boy, who is learning to skate like his big brother and who says, literally, exactly, “That’s what happens by skating, it doesn’t matter” when he falls down. This boy who is going to be as good on skates as his older brother sooner than I care to think about and who is going to leave all of us is his wake. His shiny, glittery wake. Riding down the street towards the Quartier, and the big world beyond it, and hardly remembering to wave good-bye.

Call for help from US readers

So Small Boy just lost his first tooth. I was all prepared for this in Swiss francs, but what’s the going rate for a tooth in US dollars??

And then he was big

I would know this about the Small Boy by now, or you’d think I would: he develops in jumps. Usually big ones. He takes a long time, or what seems like a long time, to get used to the idea of doing something, trying something, learning something. Then he decides one day to try it and doesn’t look back. He was on the tail end of the curve for starting to walk, but when he did walk, he walked. He never cruised the furniture. He didn’t spend weeks taking four steps and falling down. He just waited until he had this walking thing sorted out in his head and then he walked. He was a late talker, late enough for me to ask the doctor if he might have a hearing problem although I knew perfectly well that he didn’t because he had full comprehension in two languages – he just waited to talk until he was ready to talk and then it was three, four, five new words a day. He wore diapers overnight until an age that I’m not going to mention out of respect for his privacy, but one day he started waking up dry and I can count the accidents he’s had on one hand. He takes a long time to warm up to some things. Then he goes and does them, and in one day grows up by six months.

I should know this about him by now, but it takes my heart by surprise every time.

Transitioning

Wow. The change-over from Small Boy waking up around 8 and being dressed at some time in the general neighborhood of 9 to Small Boy waking up at 7:25 and being out the door for Kindergarten at 8 kicked our asses last week. Fortunately the transition to Kindergarten itself has gone smoothly. It’s his second year, he’s in the same room with the same teachers, and about half the kids in the class are his classmates from last year so all of that is familiar. But getting out the door on time? That’s been quite the transition after our lazy summer mornings. 

If you’ve got kids going back to school, how’s that going? And whether you’ve got kids or not, what’s the hardest part about summer drawing to a close for you? And what’s the best part? (Yes, I dread the grey days of winter here in the flatlands, but winter vacation skiing and sledding in the Swiss Alps? Bring it on!)

The same, but different

Small Boy started his second year of Kindergarten yesterday; he’s excited to be a Hirte this year. His Kindergarten class is mixed between five/will turn five year olds in the optional first year of Kindergarten and six/will turn six year olds in the required second year. The older kids in the group act as Hirte – “shepherds” who help the new kids learn the ropes, help enforce classroom rules, and sometimes separate kids whose playing is spilling over into fighting. Last year, as one of the new, young kids, Small Boy was a Schaf (a sheep – yeah, don’t get me started) but now he’s one of the Big Kids.

The first day was a breeze yesterday; he’s an old hand at this Kindergarten thing. When I think back to last year and the tears that were involved in my parting, to the fact that I had to stay nearly an hour that first morning and was the second-to-last parent allowed to say goodbye and leave the room, I see how much he’s grown up in the past year. Yesterday I stayed through the standard introduction and parent information session, then Small Boy ran off to the art table and started drawing pictures of butterflies and I said I could go. (His drawing has developed by leaps and bounds over the past year as well and he often dashes off to the “art project table” we have at home to draw a picture. Have I shared his pictures of Fabian Cancellara that he drew during this year’s Tour de France? No? Well, here’s one:

It may seem childish for a five and a half year old, but I never really did much drawing with him before he started kindy, so he went from literally scribbling like a toddler to drawing people on bicycles in the course of the Kindergarten year and I am very proud of him and his pictures. And that he comes up with the ideas himself, and just runs off to draw them.)

This morning I dropped Small Boy at Kindergarten – I’ve gone through the whole how-long-do-I-keep-bringing-him-all-the-way-to-the-school-house-door drama here, and for now I’m still going all the way to the building with him and picking him up at the door – and saw the clutch of new moms going into the building with their kids or peeking through the window into the changing room. The new moms are so cute; that was me last year, hovering outside the window making sure he got out of the changing room and into the classroom. This morning I simply kissed Small Boy goodbye in the school yard and called out “Tschuss!” (bye-bye) as he went running off to the building. He likes Kindergarten. He’s good at it. He’s not the most popular boy in the class, but he’s not the outsider and that’s all I could wish for. He knows how to try to play with other kids and he’s got his best buddy who he has regular out-of-school play dates with. He has even, clearly, learned a lot.

I’m curious to see what this second year brings. He is in the same classroom with the same teachers, but now that he is one of the older kids I’m curious to see how the teachers change what they expect of him. They must slowly expect more of the six year olds; these are the kids who will go to school next year. I would think they will expect ever longer periods of attention, even greater pencil control, closer attention to detail, more precise following of instructions. This year will be the same, but different, and I wonder what that will look like.

There were also lobster rolls

There wasn’t just poetry. There were also lobster rolls. I ate lobster rolls from the day I landed in Boston to the day I left. I also ate whole lobster, and crab cakes, and fisherman’s stew, and fabulous egg dishes and homemade scones, and pizza by the slice while watching the tide come and go at Duck Creek. I had lattes in the afternoon with individual sized cherry cheesecakes while writing my poems for the next day. I had a beer now and then and, on one occasion, margaritas. (Several.) I ate constantly, wonderfully, deliciously. I ate and ate and ate. I ate much and well. Much more and much more well than usual. I love my boys, but sweet Foxy Brown they manage to take the sheer selfish sensual pleasure of eating from the dinner-time experience and my god how I loved stuffing myself with lobster and crab cakes.

I need more of that in my life. More food, more good food, more grown up food.

This woman’s work

In less than a month I leave for Boston where I’ll spend a few days recovering from jetlag and enjoying one of my favorite cities before heading on to Wellfleet for the poetry workshop. R asked me to make up a general schedule for him to help him stay organized and on top of things while I’m away – just keeping track of when I do what I do so that he doesn’t suddenly wake up one morning to find that Small Boy has no underwear and Kindergarten starts in 12 minutes. 

I’d been starting to feel some creeping guilt about this upcoming trip, the kind of guilt that I’m sure some of you moms, especially fellow stay-at-home moms, will understand and perhaps find familiar. I’ll be away for twelve days (two of which are lost to trans-Atlantic travel) and I’ve been starting to think that’s rather a long time. I’ve been starting to think it’s a bit selfish. I’ve been starting to think it’s a lot of time and money for a poetry workshop. (It doesn’t help that the work I have chosen – or the work that has chosen me – holds no financial promise. I mean, even the Pulitzer Prize for poetry only awards ten grand. From a purely financial calculation, every poetry workshop I attend is a net loss – more so if R has to take vacation days so that I can get away.)  I’ve been starting to wonder if I actually deserve this all-about-me trip away from my family. Why do we do that? As women, generally, and mothers, specifically, our wants and needs end up on the low end of the totem pole more often than not.

So I started making this list/schedule for R, and it’s two pages long – and that only covers Monday through Friday! (Though I’ve put some effort into organizing things so that I don’t have to do routine house chores on the weekend.) And I’ve left off the intermittent stuff that he won’t need to deal with(recycling, washing the car, migrating boy toys back into more orderly storage) as well as the blindingly obvious stuff like “feed the children.” We let a lot of things slide around here (ironing, for example, and washing the windows), it’s part of our agreement, but apparently I still do a lot. Laundry alone takes up half the list. Grocery shopping. Picking Small Boy up from Kindi (R does the morning run), shuttling him to play-dates. Keeping the plants watered. Vacuuming. Heavens, do I vacuum. Now that we don’t have a cleaning lady, I’ve picked up the cleaning, too, and I try to stay on what was her schedule but one week out of four that probably gets lost in the shuffle. When I write down everything I do to keep this house more or less running, it runs to two pages – and here’s the scary thing: in spite of all that I do do, we don’t exactly run the tightest ship around here plus R’s chore list would probably go on for quite a bit as well. It’s exhausting, all the stupid stuff I do every day just to keep our heads above water. But seeing it listed out like that, I have to say: I’m feeling a lot less guilty about this trip. Seeing it listed out like that makes me realize that I have a full time job, and this is my two-week vacation.

Do you see yourself in this post? Do you feel a pang of “I don’t really deserve this” when you take time for yourself? It’s the time, I think, more than anything, we feel guilty about. I don’t have a problem buying things that I need (clothes, a new bike) or want (books), but when I carve out time for myself, when I get out of the house for the day (or twelve), there is a twinge of conscience. Is this ringing a bell with any of you? What do you do to push through the nagging voice and take what you need?

And before I knew it, it was time to start cooking dinner

It took over an hour to walk home from Kindergarten with the Small Boy on his scooter and The Boychen in the stroller. There was an embankment to be climbed and a chance meeting with a neighborhood boy. There were three separate encounters with cats. There was looking for rocks on the edges of the fields, blowing dandelion seed pods, and rescuing an earthworm from the middle of the road. There were puddles to be jumped in and a small bug to be saved from drowning. There was the throwing of stones for distance and the throwing of stones for splash effect. Finally, there was the wide-legged walking contest. (I secretly think Boychen won because his wide-legged walk included weaving, swerving, and sound effects and because he made me laugh and say, “You are a funny little man, Boychen, and I love you so.”)

I can think of worse ways to spend an hour.