Little Drummer Girl

"If it's not fun, you're not doing it right."

Bob Basso

A few years ago I was a member of a professional drumming group out of Vancouver called, SWARM.  The director, Bill Wallace, is an artistic genius and he creates all of the instruments out of recycled materials.  The SWARM show is exciting; drums spin and move, band members jump and dance in intricate patterns around the drums; it's very athletic, musical and unique.  

I miss playing with SWARM.  I miss drumming, rehearsing in Bill's funky studio, creating music with other talented artists, but mostly I just miss 'playing.'  I was thinking about SWARM while I was hanging out with Crazybaby in the backyard the other day.  She was happily crawling around on the lawn and I was following behind her.  I had some music playing and I just started drumming to it.  I used my hands to drum on my thighs, my hips, my stomach and my chest.  It felt good.  I was aware of Crazybaby's location on the ground, but I must admit that I was sort of zoned out.  I let myself get lost in the rhythm.  

So there I was, drumming and day-dreaming in the sunshine, when I realized that Crazybaby had stopped crawling.  She was sitting up,  smiling, looking straight at me and drumming!  She was drumming on her legs and her belly, then she mixed it up and started clapping for awhile.  At one point she even started hitting her squeaky shoes on the grass to make squeaking sounds.  It was so cool!  My baby and I were having a jam session!  She stayed connected with me like that for an entire song before she lost interest.  I was flabbergasted!  It was as though she was saying to me, "You do your thing Mama, and I'll just play along."

Was it as fulfilling as playing with SWARM?  Not even close, but it did inspire me to find new ways to enjoy drumming instead of focusing on the past.  Who knows, perhaps I'll start a Grateful Mama drum circle...

Skinned knees

"I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.” Mother Teresa Our summer clothes came out of hiding this past weekend.  Shorts, t-shirts and sandals all made an appearance, as did a little floral 'skort' that was handed-down to Pip from her cousin.  We were heading to the beach, so I was carrying an armload of bags, water-bottles, hats and keys as I descended the back stairs.  I saw Pip run across the grass toward me, trip on her new slightly-too-large sandals and fall face-first on the concrete sidewalk. Now, I admire those moms who casually say, "Brush it off  Buddy, you're okay," when their children get hurt, but in this instance, I was not one of those moms.  I dropped everything in my arms and galloped down the remaining stairs toward Pip.  I think I even said something incredibly unhelpful like, "Oooooooooooooo that was a bad one!!!" As a mother, I try to appear calm on the outside, but inside it's a different story.  My heart was racing when I peeled Pip off of the pavement and tried to get a look at her face.  "Where does it hurt, honey?"  She lifted her knee.  It was skinned.  That was all.  No lost teeth, no broken bones, just a little scrape on the knee.  I was much calmer in a crisis when I was a teacher; when it was other people's children getting hurt.  One snowy winter day I was supervising the primary playground when a young lad named Parmvir hit his chin on the monkey bars and his two adult front teeth flew out of his mouth, into the snow.  White teeth; white snow.  After I had ascertained that Parmvir was alright, I calmly organized the children into tooth-hunting teams: "Follow the little trails of blood," I suggested. The teeth were found in short order, and Parmvir went to the hospital with his pearly whites in a Ziploc baggie.  The E.R. doctor actually asked why I hadn't replaced the teeth myself!  "Better chance of the roots taking,"  he said.Hmmmm.  Not sure if I would've been up for that.  This morning Pip's scrape has turned into a neat row of scabs.  I asked her how her knee was and she said, "Mama, my dad told me a story about when he fell of a horse and his braving has made me brave.  I'm a brave girl now, Mama." Yes you are little Pip.  Now if only I could get a dose of that braving.

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.