Later, amidst the usual bedtime tears, my suddenly-five-year-old wanted to know,
"Are you gonna watch an artichoke show? I don't like artichokes, but if they're not going in my mouth I want to see it." Then, "You get to watch stuff and I don't!"
Well, yeah. And perhaps the eventual slumber of a five-year-old is better for it.
Recently, a friend lamented having showed her daughter an animated film about dragons. The movie introduced the verb "killing" into the toddlers vocabulary. Another friend, the mother of a boy who I've credited with teaching my son the art of constantly pretending to have a gun in his hand, recently mentioned that her husband is very anti-gun. So. File all of this under no-matter-what-we-do? We've tried to relax about the gun obsession, in an effort to give it as little energy as possible. And we've started "Movie Nights" with Penn, in an effort to have a little bit of popcorn-riddled fun. A part of me wonders what he would be like, raised instead in the woods with hand-hewn chess pieces on a stump covered in checker-board moss. That I painted on, chia-ball style. What if. What if we raised our child with select omissions? No guns, killing, Darth Maul, black teeth, poison, or even that bad man who sent the planes with the bombs.* What would a five-year-old Penn be like, without his tart awareness of the world? Awkward though it may be, it's an awareness.
Just musing. What is it that you wish you'd kept to yourself? For just a little longer?
xox
*Penn's description of Hitler.
Random, unhelpful, irrelevant observation: Hand-hewn chess pieces actually sounds like a thing. So much less hilarious than hand-hewn pistachio butter, is what I'm saying.
ReplyDeleteBut, you know, also: Penn is perfect, with all his awkward awareness of the world. Seriously. And: Tell him Amy HATES the artichoke show--like LOATHES--and she says he's not missing anything at all. I'm pretty sure it won't convince him, but it's worth a try. xoxo
DeleteLis, my only sorrow at having Amy on my coast again (I haven't seen her, you know, I just know that she's here) is about the fact that you don't have her anymore. Because I've never seen you, but I like you a lot.
ReplyDeleteHelen's 11 now. She's doing some active, aware mourning of being old enough to have to know about and deal with grownup stuff when she still wants to be a child (sex stuff right now, but it's been violence stuff before). There's very little we've kept to ourselves over the years, although plenty of things we've said "you're not old enough to see/know/hear that yet". The bad luck of our lives has meant that some of what she's gotten rough outlines of information about (and details only as she got old enough to be able to ask to know) have included murder, violent assault, and death from old age and disease of people and animals she knew, in addition to the usual background hum of friends/family members divorces, alcoholism, bad presidents, wars, etc. I am SO sorry that these things were part of her young life -- but I'm still not sorry that we told her about them when they were going on. The only real comfort I can offer her in times of fear is the assurance that we don't lie to her. That things are not worse or scarier than she imagines them to be, and if we say we can handle it, we can. That if we say something is imaginary -- part of a movie or a story or out of her head -- it can be dealt with in imaginary ways, and that if we say something is real, we will tell her what we are doing to keep her safe from it. (that one was harder with the bad president)
So I'm not sorry about what we did -- but I am a bit wistful at the thought that our girl could have been Penn, wondering about the artichoke show. He DOES sound perfect. And I hate that show, too, just saying.
That was such a thorough, thoughtful comment, Janet. I can't keep up. But I do want to note, Lis, how *apropos* this post is to many of my recent parenting thoughts... especially the idea of young children's First Encounters with new things, ie killing, or the idea of exterminators (that was when I turned off the Arreity video). And also a Theme I have been journaling on for a while now: IT's probably not about what we keep out, but about what we let in. But then sometimes what we keep out does seem important. Sidenote - Nico is switching next week to a preschool where more is kept out... not Waldorf, but a media/logo free policy.
ReplyDeleteI'm now imagining a world in which Janet, Lis, Andrea, and so many other People Who Should Know One Another live in close proximity to one another. And to me, naturally. Bliss. (See you SOON, Jan!)
ReplyDeleteHow about if that world were to be a vacation colony commune with a retirement option?
ReplyDeleteAndrea, you are so my people.
DeleteI know, my person. In fact, I also have an underway journal entry that starts all about this giant leap in your life... about what is means for all of us people with dreams but also about losing you from CA before getting to spend as much time together as we could have. But there is the internet, and the potential vacation commune.
DeleteSo... all those times I was eating/drinking something you guys didn't want Penn to have, you could have said "it's artichoke flavored" instead of "it causes cancer."
ReplyDeleteI haven't ate Captain Crunch since.
Denis