Emotions

"One's suffering disappears when one lets oneself go, 

when one yields - even to sadness."  

~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

After a wonderful week at the beach-house it was time to pack our bags and head home.  Big Daddy-O took the girls for a walk while I went from room to room stripping beds, gathering towels, packing, and opening windows to let the fresh sea-air circulate.  It was a gorgeous day; one of those windy, sparkly days when the waves pound the shore and everything seems to come alive as it gets kissed by the sun.

I felt sad.  The beach-house was put up for sale earlier this year, and every time I leave it, I can't help but imagine leaving it for good.  I look out at that view and I remember building forts with my brother and sister, playing guitar with my friends, kissing my first love, staring up at the stars the night before my grandfather died, taking our new puppy for her first walk, watching my sister get married, dancing under the stars at my own wedding, floating in the ocean one lazy afternoon when a pod of orcas swam by, taking Pip for her first dip in the Pacific...so many rites of passage.  That beach feels like me.  

As I made my way around the house I felt a lump in my throat, but I swallowed it.  Then Pip walked in.  She was on the verge of tears and she said, "Mama, I just can't say good-bye to this room, I just can't do it," and the dam broke.  It was like she was releasing all of the emotions that I had been feeling.  I gave her a cuddle and explained that we'd be back soon.  I told her that her Grandpa was having some guests stay at the house and it was their turn to enjoy the beach.  I wiped her tears.  Comforting her comforted me. 

Thirty minutes later the car was all packed-up and I was making a final sweep of the house.  Pip was still feeling sad, but she'd had enough already.  "Mama, I just want to go now.   I want to have the 'guestez' come and I want to be back in our sweet-home-home."  She climbed into her car-seat and I buckled her in.  She had a quiet cry as we drove away from the house.

Again, I felt that my little three-year-old was giving a voice to my emotions.  Instead of stifling what she was feeling, she let her emotions rise up, she released them, she dealt with them, and she moved on.  

I remember reading about cancer patients in a book called, When the Body Says No, by Gabor Mate.  He found that patients who tried to suppress their emotions didn't do as well as those who let their feelings out; the anger, the fear, the frustration, everything.  My understanding of Mate's theory is that if you don't deal with your emotions, then your body ends up taking them on in some form of 'dis-ease.'

So it's healthy for our little ones to let their emotions out as they feel them, and it's healthy for us too.  If I had let myself shed a few tears that morning at the beach house, I could have easily explained to Pip why I was feeling a bit sad.  She would have understood.  

Poof

"You can't deny laughter; when it comes, it plops down in your favorite chair and stays as long as it wants."  

Stephen King, Hearts in Atlantis

I’m wondering why we didn’t teach Pip a cute name for 'flatulence.'  My parents taught us that we were 'poofing,' (rather onomatopoetic,)  and I’ve heard of 'tooting' which seems appropriate in a steam-engine sort of way.  I don’t actually recall teaching Pip the word ‘fart,’ so we must’ve been caught off guard.  My husband and I had no preliminary discussions about naming Pip’s flatulence, we were more concerned with gas etiquette.  

So here we are with a very polite three-year-old who says, "Excuse me, I farted."  Worse yet, she thinks it's funny.  Case in point: Pip often takes books onto the couch and ‘reads’ them aloud, her stories being a combination of memorized and invented text.  I was taken aback when she picked up her book about frogs and said to me, “Now this is a story about the Wiggles farting.”

“Oh honey, farts are not funny,” I said with some difficulty.

“Yes they are, Mama.”

“Who taught you that farts are funny?” 

“My dad taught me that farts are funny.” (Figures.) 

“What did he say?”

“He said, Ah, ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!!" Pip did a rather boisterous impression of her father’s jolly laugh.

I tried to keep a straight face, “Well, I like to think of the Wiggles dancing and singing.  Not farting.” 

Pip continued, “The Wiggles heard some rumbling and it was a big FART!”  she said with tremendous glee.   

I pictured her telling this story to her cousins or some kids on the playground.  Not good.  I couldn't simply forbid the use of the term 'fart' because that would make it all the more exciting.  I appealed to her common sense, “Honey, farts are just natural gas.”  Pip quickly adapted her tale,

“The Wiggles had some natural gas.  And it started to rumble and all the Wiggles had to fart.  Then, a big raccoon took away all the farting.  The Wiggles were very happy after all of the farting was gone.  They plonked away to home and said, “Murray, Jeff, Anthony, we stopped farting!!!”

The Wiggles had stopped farting, but I couldn't stop laughing.  It turns out, farts are funny, but if I had it to do over again, I think I'd call them toots.

A stick by any other name

"Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom."

Thomas Jefferson

We went to visit friends the other day and Pip wanted to take a gift to the four-year-old boy we'd be seeing.  She found a little stick on the beach and decided it would make the perfect present.  When she offered the stick to the little boy, his grandmother was squatting beside him: "Oh, my," she began, "what a wonderful gift!  What do you think this could be?" she asked her grandson.  

"It could be a flute," he said.  His grandma responded with the appropriate nods and affirmative sounds.  "It looks like a dog," the little boy continued, "or maybe a shark!"  He was good at this game.

The grandmother said something like, "All great ideas!" then she turned to Pip.  "And what do you think it is, Pip?"

"Well," Pip began earnestly, "it's a stick."

Full Circle

"In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, bridge to our future."

Alex Haley

We’re staying at my parents’ beach-house this week, and I’m experiencing many, “full-circle,” moments.  The first occurred when Big Daddy-O, Pip, Crazybaby & I went for a morning walk on the beach.  Crazybaby was riding in the backpack on Big Daddy-O and I was helping Pip walk on logs.  I told her that, as kids, her aunt and uncle and I used to try to get all the way to Kitty Coleman Park only by walking on logs.  At that point I actually thought, “Whoa, when I was a skinny twelve-year-old leaping from log to precarious log, I had no idea that I’d be helping my wee daughter log-leap thirty years later on the very same stretch of beach.”  Glorious.

Another full-circle moment arrived during a tea-party with Pip.  My friend Wendy wrote a lovely piece about having tea with her grandmother, and it reminded me of the tea-parties my grandfather and I used to enjoy.  He would call me Mrs. Hefflefinger, speak with a British accent, and we’d have wonderful conversations, but we would only pretend to drink tea.  Wendy’s story inspired me to serve Pip real tea. (Heavy on the milk and sugar.)

Pip was beside herself with excitement.  We invited her two stuffed frogs to join us at the table, but we didn’t set tea-cups for them because Pip insisted that they were, “too young to drink real tea.”

I treated every part of the tea-making as a sacred ceremony: filling the kettle with water, pouring it into the tea pot over the two bags of tea, pinching the delicate little papers at the end of the tea-bag strings to perform a few critical dunks, and finally pouring the tea into our eager cups.  Pip chose a flowery cup with red tulips and I went with a short round mug that felt best when held with two hands.

The sound of tea being poured into a cup has to be one of the most soothing sounds in the world.  Wavelets on a beach, my daughters’ breathing when they’re asleep and the tea-pour; those might be my top-three soothing sounds right there.  Pip smiled when she tasted her warm beige drink.  “I like it Mama.”  I asked her if I could call her Mrs. Hefflefinger, but she said, “I’m Murray Mama,” so I called her Murray.  I did, however, launch into my best British accent with:

“I can safely say that this is the most delightful cup of tea that I have ever enjoyed, Murray.” 

And it was.

 

Ducklings

"Leadership involves finding a parade and getting in front of it."

John Naisbitt

I saw something crossing the highway this morning.  At first I thought it was a peacock with it's long tail flat on the ground, then I realized it was a mother duck with eight or nine ducklings following closely behind her in a perfectly straight line.  Many cars stopped to let the feathered family walk safely across the highway; we were all united in spirit, sitting there in our vehicles hoping that the ducks would survive the crossing.  

As I watched the busy little webbed feet following in their mother's footsteps I admired how perfectly behaved the ducklings were.  They moved as one.  I wondered if the mother duck had to have a chat with her babies before attempting the treacherous crossing, "Now dears, we're about to waddle across a very busy highway and you must stay close together in line behind me."  Did she use positive reinforcement?  Were the ducklings going to be treated to a snack once they reached the other side?  Perhaps she had to threaten them with a time-out.  Whatever she did, it obviously worked.  Good little ducks.   

Imagination

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

Albert Einstein

I've been Anthony Wiggle for over a week now.  Pip has chosen to be Murray Wiggle and she won't wear anything that isn't red.  We're both still females and I'm still 'Mama,'  but she calls me Anthony and I have to call her Murray.  In case you're not familiar with The Wiggles, they are a collection of peppy Australian men who sing and dance on their own Kid's Show.  

Having only been acquainted with the Wiggles for a couple of weeks, I think Pip is playing the role of Murray exceptionally well.  She's more of a method actor, like De Niro.  "Anthony, look, it's your favourite colour, blue!"  she'll say to me.  And any time I call her by her real name instead of Murray, she corrects me, "Silly Anthony, you know my name is Murray."  She also speaks about herself in the third person, "Murray doesn't like beans Mama," and "Murray has to pee."

Just when I was growing weary of the Wiggles role-play, I was reminded of Albert Einstein's quotation.  Where would our society be without the great imaginers of our time?  In a technological age where knowledge is so readily accessible, imagination becomes even more of a commodity.  So, I'll continue to be Anthony as long as Pip wants me to be.  (The frightening thing is, I'm getting used to calling her Murray.)

Labels

"We are each so much more than what some reduce to measuring."

Karen Kaiser Clark

Marlo Morgan wrote a fascinating book called, "Mutant Message Downunder."  It's about a walkabout that she went on with a group of Australian Aboriginees.  After the book was published, some controversy arose regarding the book's authenticity, but I met Marlo in my girlfriend's apartment in Vancouver long before she was published, and I believed her story.  

There were many beautiful things that she learned from the Aboriginal people, one of which had to do with labels.  Instead of calling someone in their tribe a doctor or painter or dancer, they held the title, 'interested in medicine' or 'interested in art.'  And they could change their title at any time!  Someone could be 'interested in medicine,' for years, then decide to become 'interested in dance.'  Doesn't that seem liberating?

This concept really resonates with me now that I hold the title of, "Stay-at-home-Mom."  I dislike this label.  It implies that all I do is stay at home mothering.  It doesn't define me.  I find, at parties, it's a bit of a conversation-stopper.  People don't know where to go with it. 

Instead of asking the mundane question, "So what do you do?"  I've started asking people what they're passionate about, or what they're interested in.  So far, people have rolled with it and I've enjoyed some great conversation.  

Don't get me wrong, I am very proud to be raising my two daughters full-time, but today I think I'll be 'interested-in-writing.'