Reasons to Love ‘Em

 

1. This.

 

 

2. Booming, repeated, sing-songy, deep-voiced: I AM BUTT MERMAID! I AM A BUTT MERMAID! from the bathtub.

3. Honesty. To the cashier at the grocery store: My mama reads a book while she”s pooping.

4. The perspective of treasure. A feather, an autumn leaf, a rock from the parking lot, the pull tab from the soy milk container.

5. Culinary tastes. You like to eat your boogers too? I do too. They are so sweet and salty. Yum.

6. Love of everything teenager. Pretend that I was twelve but then I turned thirteen, so now I am a TEENAGER. And I was sitting on the couch… but I am a teenager, and then I went to the bathroom by myself, ‘cuz I’m a teenager?… and then I got a new puppy because I am a teenager and you let me…

 

7. This.

 

 

8. Dialog screamed while swinging.

Do you know how babies are made?

Yeah!

Isn’t it GROSS?

YEAH!

9. Suspension of reality. Mom, pretend that I am pregnant but we didn’t know it. But one day the baby popped out and you came over to see it and you were so surprised. Ok?

10. Glitter in the lint trap.

 

11. This.

 

 

Open to Something Other Than Suckiness

If you can, quickly scroll down to the post before this, yesterday’s post. The one with the unbelievable hair, hair you’d never imagine reshaping itself into something smooth. Now you can appreciate the photo above. Now you might feel like I do, astounded.

It just goes to show that you never know. Even though it looks like things are headed down a beaten path, a path obvious and unavoidable, sometimes they don’t, and you are humbled and surprised. There are many times when I think I know best, when I’ve got a pocket so full of parental experience that I am smug and irritated. I say things like: No, honey that won’t work, or, That’s not an option sweetheart.

Take Echo’s hair for instance. I really would not have thought that letting it wind itself into a wild maze of tangles, a giant helmet of snarls, and not brushing it for days on end was a viable option. That path felt like a dead-end, like one that was going to end badly for all involved. The mama was sure to sweat while trying to untie the knots, performing that tricky limbo of holding the hair near the scalp to spare the child pain, while rip rip ripping downward to free the locks. The child was sure to cry, no matter how well the mama played her role.

But I was wrong.

Our bath was tender and sweet. I held my girl in my lap, swooping her hair through the warm water. We shampooed and conditioned. You know how sometimes, a particular bath will seem to have magical powers, and the child comes out shining? Virtually glowing with cleanliness? Well that’s how it was. And she sat on the couch and let me brush without any fuss, and then in true village spirit, our friend Romy (whose garage we occupy) separated and braided those little blonde hairs into the most groomed hair-do of all time.

It’s basically a miracle.

This kind of thing is like giving the child the benefit of the doubt, but it’s not only the child that deserves it, it’s everyone, it’s the universe too.

If we look I’m sure there are other times like this, when we could give the universe the benefit of the doubt instead of struggling against the tide. Late afternoon naps could be like hair tangles. Your child is headed for one of those late afternoon-almost evening naps and as a parent you groan with dread, so sure of the meltdowns and wild crying that is sure to follow, and so do everything you can to keep the child awake. Paddling upstream, trying to make a u-turn, anything to avoid the certain doom. But she could sleep through until morning. She might wake up smiling. Maybe it happened otherwise seventy thousand times before, but Echo had a rat’s nest yesterday and sleek braids today, so what do we really know?

Gum could be like hair tangles. Even though every other time I have let Echo hold the piece of gum she is obsessing over while she finishes her meal, of course with the condition that she not chew it until after the food, she chews it anyway. Right away. She slides down from the chair, asks me to not follow her, moves to the depths of the bedroom, faces the wall, slowly unwraps the gum, and begins to chew. Her logic is that if I do not see her do it I will not be upset. My logic is that I will never give her another piece of gum to hold until after, again. But Echo had a tangled beehive yesterday and sleek braids today, so what do I really know?

Remain open. It sounds like an admonition from a new age calendar, not a notion I keep handy in times of parental strife. But maybe I should.

 

Where We Are

Hair update? Tangly.

Emotional State of Three-Year Old? Happy.

Future Hair Plans? Hazy.

I’ve written often about Echo’s tangly hair. Early on I realized her bed head was a perfect opportunity to employ some empathy. Later, when she wanted dreadlocks I was forced to face my feelings on that subject. And because her interest in purposely tangled hair vacillated, each morning I found myself peppering her with loaded questions. Do you want dreadlocks? Do you want to cut it? Then we should brush it, right? Badgering her daily, thinking that these were our only options and we damn well better pick one. Asap.

But children are smarter than parents. She knows very well that hair is not a life or death matter. That she can not dread, not cut, and not brush quite easily without condemning herself. Her choice is to allow her hair to tangle itself into a gnarly sixties boufant for five days on end and then wash it and brush it.

So that’s where we are. Day five isn’t easy on me, you’ll see me folding that boufant into a convenient, tangle-concealing bun, and day six, when we wash and brush isn’t easy on her, you’ll see her running naked from the brush. But we are surviving.

Keeping It To Myself

Kids can be gross.

They wipe their hands up their noses when snot drips and then continue up their face, leaving a snail trail across their forehead and through their hair. They dip everything in ketchup. They drop a bean from their burrito and then drop to the taqueria floor to pick it up, only they don’t grab the right one, instead slipping a smashed and gritty stranger bean into their mouths. They drink bath water. They eat boogers. Later when they can change their own underwear, they don’t, leaving the same pair on until a grossed-out parent notices. They suck on strands of their hair until it’s stiff. They show their butts. They get ice cream up their noses and it dries to a grey varnish.

This morning when Echo sneezed into the crook of her arm, as she has been taught, but then snaked that still moist arm under my neck for a good snuggle, I began to compile a list of all the gross things kids do. It was long and my face crinkled up in disgust. Our girls do several nasty things a day but I try, try, try to keep a blank, neutral expression. When Xi runs her snotty hand down the length of her brown hair, I casually sidle up and display her slimy lock, explaining what her nose wiping method results in. At night when I am scrubbing seven layers of rainbow-colored crust from Echo’s mouth, cheeks, nose, forehead, and she asks me why, I refrain from saying: Because you’re dirty. Even when it is so astoundingly thick and widespread I do not say: What a filthy girl you are! Not even in a sing-song voice and with a loving twinkle in my eye. Instead I explain that during the night the food and dirt on her face will slough off, creating dirt crumbles in bed that will be uncomfortable to sleep on.

I refrain from saying things about her body and her appearance, not because I don’t care (I do), and not because I am trying to avoid confrontation (I’m not), but for the same reason that I don’t shout: Good job! even when the job she is doing is good, or even fantastic. I am trying to let Echo (and Xi and Bella) maintain her intrinsic appreciation of her own value. I do not want her to look to me for an understanding of whether or not she is good, or whether or not how her jumping (skipping, singing, writing, counting) is good. I want her to feel for herself the pleasure of these activities, and in that way she will continue to want to do these things, continue to enjoy them.

The same can be said for appearance. I certainly do not want my daughter to see herself through my eyes, or through anyone else’s for that matter. I want her to feel herself, not see herself. I can imagine what her little body must feel like – supple, full of energy, perfect in every way – and I want her perception to stay that way. But it’s hard! Not the dirt so much, but sometimes she’s so darn cute and I want to grab her, squeeze her to tiny bits and shout: You are so cute! The other night for the downtown gallery walk, Echo donned a striped blue dress with a petticoat underneath. The shape of the dress was so screamingly pleasing, her eyes so blue because of it, her chubby brown legs just darling jutting out beneath. She twirled and said: What do you think? and I wanted to swoon, I wanted to scream: You’re so beautiful I could eat you up! but instead I calmly said: I like it, do you?

I have heard it would be even better if young children did not have access to a mirror for the first several years. And that makes sense. I know how distracting it can be to wonder if I look alright, how hard it is, when the image in the mirror is less than pleasing, to simply go through my day. How sunken I can feel. After Echo slid her snotty arm under my sleepy neck and then coughed, accidentally into my face, she sighed with content, rolled over to her Papa and said: Papa, I love you. I will never hate you. Never never hate you.

And that’s the point of parenting, isn’t it? At least one of them. Not to prevent them from hating us, although that would be sugar on top, but to prevent them from hating themselves. If concealing my ews helps that to happen, I’ll do it. No matter how much snot is involved.

Bicycle

Bicycle! Bicycle!

We live in the downtown area, which means that basically every destination is within fifteen blocks, or so. The library, the coffeshop, friends’ houses, the river, the pet supply store, the bank, dance class, you get the picture. So most days I toodle about on an upright, old red bike I found in an alley, chosen because of its shape, meaning it was able to accommodate the front loading seat we had for Echo. Only one brake functions, the seat slowly tilts forward as I ride, and the gears don’t shift well, but we love it. Often I attach the dog trailer and pull eighty-pound Henrydog around too, making him wait while I run errands, and then finally stopping along the river to throw a ball, soak him entirely, and exhaust him thoroughly. The system works perfectly for our, often, simple life. But it’s a slow ride with no gears to speak of and my legs splayed to make room for Echo’s body.

For that reason, when our journey takes us beyond our “zone” I wimp out entirely and take the car. Until yesterday. With Nathan at work, the most beautiful day in history, and the need to deliver Xi to her other house (decidedly outside the “zone”) I looked around for an alternative. And then I saw Bicycle, my trusty road bike. I pumped the tires, hooked on the kid trailer, loaded Echo, Xi, lunch box,and every scrap of school project that Xi wanted to show her mother, and hit the road.

We went up hills, through a tunnel, over a railroad bridge. I felt like Natty Gann, hitting the road, seeing the west, riding from horizon to horizon. My body lithe. My legs strong. Not toodling but zipping.

Oh my trusty bicycle friend! How I had forgotten thee!

There is a long history with that bike. When I had just graduated college and returned home to work for my sister and her bike delivery company I rode a red mountain bike, a bike so stupid within the context of Santa Cruz-bike messenger-roadbike-coolness, that we nicknamed it Chad. And Chad just wasn’t going to cut it so I searched and searched for a road bike that would fit my small frame, not an easy task, and one day was surprised by Bicycle. She is blue and I loved her from the start. Bicycle is what I rode on the bike tour where I witnessed the spider to wasp battle. Bicycle is what we strapped onto my truck when I moved to Colorado for grad school. The same trip where, when we stopped in Nevada to try out the novelty of gambling and pulled into the casino parking garage, the handlebars of Bicycle didn’t make the required clearance and were munched, and I cried my eyes out on the curb. Bicycle is what I rode, in the wee hours of the morning to my job in a bakery. I rode in the middle of the street, no hands, and one time, in the heat of summer, topless, because there was no one in the streets at that time of night. Bicycle is what I was riding, years later, whizzing down a hill, when I saw Nathan for the first time.

Bicycle.

A long-lost friend.

Riding her yesterday, I was drawn to analyze why I had moved her aside. Why I grab the van now to drive to the box stores when yesteryear I rode Bicycle, navigating stop lights and unfriendly traffic without a second thought. I suppose having a baby can cause that kind of change. For the first year of her life, hating to strap her into the car seat, which she loathed, and following the bike trailer rule of waiting until the child is twelve months old to use it, we walked everywhere, and simply did not go where we could not walk. In winter I loaded her in layers of clothes, strapped her into the ergo pack, and then tied an old down coat over top. My body became unbelievably strong, at least in that way. And then at the magic age of one, I put a pickle in her hand, strapped on her insanely large red helmet, loaded her into the trailer, and rode three exuberant blocks before she screamed and wanted to get out. So there is that. An unwilling passenger would, of course, prevent one from going beyond the “zone”.

But there is more underneath that.

Yesterday, buoyed by the successful trip across town, Nathan and I decided to ride further. First to a harvest party at a homestead in the hills, and from there, across town again to an evening baby shower. Again I pumped the tires (seems Bicycle has a slow leak), loaded sweatshirts, bottles of water, toys, and an apple cake into the trailer, and set off. We chatted and laughed through paved neighborhoods, winding our way to the hills. Soon the pavement turned to dirt, and our chatter to labored breathing. My pulse began to beat in my skull. Sweat trickled through my hair, and I thought This is hard. I panted. I looked ahead to see how much further we had to go and the road stretched on. On and up. But I also thought, This is hard, but so what? What am I saving myself for? What are these quads for if not to move my body, to transport my child? I will be tired, and drink water, and feel good, and sleep well tonight and wake up and have energy again.

I think I have been living in scarcity. With a colicky newborn I stripped down. I ate only rice and sweet potatoes, so that her belly would be soothed by milk made from simple foods. As she grew, as all the girls grew, I watched the clock, wanting to be home before too late. Wanting them tucked in bed with teeth brushed by the appointed bedtime. I managed our day, seeking stimulation – but not too much, action – but only in the right measure, and fun – but not so much that we couldn’t recover quickly. There was so much at stake, so much preciousness at hand that I was careful of them, but if I am honest, also of me. I wanted to be equipped. Like a mountaineer that stocks up on the latest alpine gear, I was stockpiling rest, energy, vitamins, whatever I would need to care for these beings. Without knowing what chaos the next day would bring, I sought to keep the current day simple, to remain in constant preparation.

And there is sense to that method, sure. Children need sleep and they need moderation. Certainly parenting is a lot easier when the kids are well rested and well fed, and maybe more importantly, parenting is easier when the parents are well rested and well fed. I know that conflict resolution, figuring out whose turn it is with the roller skates is akin to torture with less than six hours of sleep, but what does that have to do with my quads?

Perhaps I can parent just as well with tired muscles, as at this point I am not literally chasing anybody. There are no toddlers running toward the street anymore. In fact Echo casually saunters next to me now. I still hold her a lot, of course, but I don’t think I need to stockpile muscle strength any longer. The days of screaming after three blocks in the bike trailer are over too. The ride to the homestead took a long time, but there was barely a peep from Echo. She cooed to a crusty plastic Bambi figurine for the duration. Which is good because I was not much of a conversationalist. I sweated and pumped away, past cows, over rocks, and just when I started looking ahead hoping for an end in sight, Nathan circled around with his trailer-less mountain bike and gently pushed me upward. I thanked him, as I know how hard it must be to pedal and push someone else at the same time. He said he didn’t want to patronize me, since he knew I could do it, but he wanted it to still be fun. I loved that answer.

And it was fun. We made it. And drank water, and wiped sweat, ate apple cake and other homemade dishes, tried to catch a chicken to hold, smiled at friends, and pumped water from a real water pump. As the sun slanted low we made our way to the top of the orchard and gazed out at yellow hills. Deer poop at our feet, strands of spider web flying like flags from grass stalks, fermented apple on the air. My legs were spent, my mind flat in a good way, and I wanted to freeze that moment for eternity. I wanted to hear Echo say Mama? I want to see a deer, so stop moving your leg, hold really still, and turn to actually see a deer sniffing our human scent, again and again.

I wanted to remember Bicycle, to never forget her. I wanted to remember my body and all that it is capable of, to remember that wobbly legs are good. I wanted to remember that I don’t need to hoard muscle strength, that I can spend it and still parent well, that I can spend it and it will fill again.

And again and again.

For Her

It’s late and I’m up, crushing chunks of powdered sugar into fine dust, grating lemons, cutting butter into chunks. My eyes are a little blurry, my hands coated in flour, I want it to be perfect. The best raspberry lemon cake she has ever tasted.

Because she is perfect.

The best anyone could hope for in a companion, a confidant, a friend. We knew each other, a little, when we practiced yoga together in a clean room painted robin’s egg blue, what seems like centuries ago. Before children, before Feeleez, before anything important ever happened. She left town at that time and it wasn’t until later, much later, when I saw her stroll past me in slow motion at the Farmer’s Market, her baby-belly before her enormous and beautiful, that her value struck me. My heart skipped a beat and she was lost in the crowd. Nathan seeing the look on my face nudged me forward, encouraged me to find her. So I did. Pushing past my personality, pushing past baskets of produce to find her, to tell her I like her. To seal, with a smile and an awkward shrug, a friendship.

It was one of the best things I have done in my life.

Happy Birthday my dear friend. I love you so.

Happy Birthday

Sure wish I could see more scenes like these.

Happy Birthday Dad.

Tracker

There’s a sheet of paper floating around the house right now. Scrawled in Bella’s nine-year old print, is:

“Special Club Members”

Bella: Club Leader

Xi: Tracker

Echo: Assistant

Doesn’t that sound about right as far as classic family dynamics go? Bella, the oldest, of course would not only come up with the idea of a club, but would also designate herself as the highest officer in the land. Next in line? The middle child, offered a post that indicates a modicum of involvement (as it turns out “tracker” is our girls’ version of secretary), without directly challenging the oldest sister’s superiority. And the little sister? Well of course she is given a role that satisfies her need for inclusion without offering any actual duties or tasks.

This hierarchy is kept in tact whether the game is Special Club, Gem Child, or Farm Game. Bella comes up with a stunning title and the most awesome character for herself, Xi complains of inequality, that Bella always gets the best name (Blue Star, Diamond Child, etc.), Bella concedes something slightly awesome to Xi, a title cool sounding enough to soothe Xi’s ego, and Echo flits about like a fruit fly, begging for recognition of any kind and then forgetting her role entirely. It’s like a template you could lift off at bedtime and then drag out again the next morning, to settle over the current fantasy scenario.

In fact this dynamic is so common at our house that yesterday when Papa was gearing up to pick up Bella for the weekend and Xi broke into tears we were outright flabbergasted. Xi, out of the blue, declared she was dreading Bella’s visit because in her mind Bella and Echo play all the time and leave her out. Nathan and I could barely pick our jaws off the floor. What?! We looked for clarification, peppering the middle child with questions. Are you serious? You really aren’t kidding? She was serious. Despite the fact that, by parental calculations, Xi and Bella spend approximately thirty consecutive hours each weekend, with heads bent, invisible strings of imagination binding them together, and eyes entirely blind to the rest of the world, Xi feels differently.

That’s the thing about life. To my great frustration, there is no official screenplay. There is only perception. Darn it all. Even though I know this, somewhere in my rational mind, I can’t help but drag out the dog-eared script, the thing I think must be the official version because it’s how I see it! I wanted to draw an illustration for Xi, two fused lumps representing her and her older sister, and a blurred orb circling around them representing Echo. I wanted to pull out graphs. I wanted her to see that what she was saying was pure lunacy. And we tried. At least a little. Reminding Xi that we, the parents, are almost constantly nudging the older girls to involve the little one, and if she conceded that fact then couldn’t she see that that meant she and Bella play together? A lot?

No, she couldn’t.

The basics of the situation were that a child was upset, and our usual response, at least our desired parental response during a moment like this, is to empathize. But it’s hard! When the feelings the kid is having simply do not make sense, it’s hard to find understanding, hard to dig up empathy. I become resistant, feeling like if I pat her back I will appear to agree with her perspective. If I wipe her tears I will be saying: You’re right honey. You ARE left out all the time. And she isn’t! Ever! But somehow we did it. We found empathy. In our minds we agreed to disagree and reminded ourselves that empathy is not agreement, it is simply acknowledgement.

Empathy is acknowledgement.

Empathy is only acknowledgement.

So we acknowledged.

You’re really sad. It’s upsetting to you to feel left out, even for a second. Yeah. Bella is important to you. You are so excited to see her and it’s hard when she pays attention to Echo huh?

And she felt better.

As we were hugging I remembered the family dynamic, the difficulty of the number three, everything I’ve read or heard about middle children, and my heart went out to the little pink-clad seven-year old. Nathan and I circled around her, smoothing her hair, squeezing her taut back, and said:

We love you so much. You are so important to this family.

Again and again.

Conspiracy Theories

These are the true and uncensored reasons why I do not make it to the computer to post something new. In no particular order.

1. Lately the laptop, the heat of it, has been traveling through my wrists, into my forearms, causing an eery ache that permeates my muscles and bones, and makes my actual skin hurt. These sensations draw recollections of microwave warnings and all the articles my father has printed out and mailed to my home about cell phone use. Creepy images of nebulous tumors and modern-day diseases. Ew.

2. There is a particular three-year old running around these parts.

a. She has discovered storynory.com on which a norwegian named Natasha reads classic fairy tales and the like. Although this website does not provide animation, said three-year old prefers to sit directly in front of the computer while the stories are read, thereby preventing a certain mother from doing anything at all computer related. And although said mother enjoys what listening to stories does to her child’s brain, she does not enjoy what these stories are doing for her productivity.

b. That same three-year old has a special sensor located somewhere within her brown and agile body that alerts her to any computer action. As soon as there is even a subtle move toward the corner, toward the keyboard, there are book requests, a sudden need to poop, vague but insistent needs to be held, or falling off chair accidents.

3. If I do not manage to wrangle a window of opportunity before the sun shines fully through the snake terrarium, the odds of writing go sharply down hill. While I can ignore the needs-to-be-swept- floor, my unbrushed hair and teeth, my got-dressed-quickly, still-don’t-have-a-bra-on, reached-for-the-first-thing-in-order-to-not-freeze-while-helping-the-child-unleash-her-morning-pee outfit while it is still considered morning, my awareness of them gradually increases as the sun rises. Before long their presence is pressing on me like that scene from the original Star Wars where the heroes are trapped in a trash compactor and the walls begin to smoosh inward. Tending to these things, the outfit and the disarray of the house, leads to the tending of other things and before I know it, the computer is a speck on the horizon, a missed rendezvous.

4. After the children sleep I like to pretend its my friday, like I’ve punched my time card and I’m heading out the door for a well deserved cigarette. But I don’t smoke. The closest thing I come to a smoke is some contraband chocolate that has been stashed on top of the fridge where children’s eyes do not roam. Permanently melty chocolate. But I like to act off-duty in some manner, even if it means laying on the couch. And although blogging, at least how I am currently doing it, is not work, it still doesn’t feel like a martini with fellow co-workers. Although, my co-worker is a bad influence in his own way. If I lay my desires to post before him he’d certainly let me type to my heart’s content, but most often his offers of a tiny tv screen, a movie, and snuggles on the couch, sound pretty off-duty to me and blogging quickly fades away.

5. I’m writing a book. This is kind of a secret. Shhhh! And mostly it means furtive scribblings in a hand-me-down notebook, that (I hope!) no one could understand if they tried. But nevertheless I’m a bit like my child, who narrates her every play move like a storybook: Then she dashed down the hill to save her baby. And then she looked over her shoulder and saw a beeeaauutiful unicorn! Only mine are more mundane: She sprinkled salt over the stir-fry, hoping to transform it from a pile of vegetables into something dinner-like. For the rest of the evening she’d catch tastes of her salty thumb and wonder… In any case, my brain is busy, and shy. When I absent-mindedly compose words for a post I can imagine those words marching right onto the computer screen. When I compose for The Book, my mind turns toward the corner, hides its face, whispers, and doesn’t go anywhere near something as public as a computer.

6. The seasons changed. This is a natural phenomenon, of course, one that Echo at least is delighting in. Mom! Look at the trees! I LOVE what is happening! And through her eyes I love it too. It truly is beautiful, but what a changing season also means is:

a. A shedding dog. An extremely sheddy dog. It turns out, who would have thunk it, that a dog lets go of his summer coat in order to grow a winter one. I personally would have thought it might be more efficient to add hair as preparation for winter but Henry thinks otherwise. He is shiny, silky, and just the softest pat of butter you’ll ever meet, but whereas I can get away with sweeping every other day in the off-season, twice a day is necessary during shedding season. Carpet scraping and giant dust-bunny(bison) herding is also necessary. A small thing really but when the window of opportunity is so narrow every second counts.

b. The great clothing trade-out. Currently, in our temporary, during-construction lodgings each family member has a personal tub of clothing, as there is no space for dressers of any kind. So when the weather turns snappy, no matter how much they rummage about, they will only turn over shorts, tank tops, bathing suits, and skirts, as I have shoved everything else into boxes. And those boxes are somewhere in the storage unit, the wild frontier of the storage unit, the dark tank that seemed so organized and simple as we were stuffing it last winter, but is daunting and mysterious now, seven months later. It’s only a block away but it might as well be cross-country in terms of practicality. Finally, when a sunflowered, thin dress just wasn’t going to keep Echo warm, we began the Great Trade-out. Strapping into the van, unlocking the tank, climbing about on upturned mattresses, shoving aside seemingly never before seen objects, re-locking the tank, wrestling boxes into the van, strapping in once again, and returning to not only wash every single summer item that every single family member has ever worn, but also trying on, re-folding, and re-figuring who wears what. It’s no small thing.

7. My man has a blog too. And he isn’t casual. I might leave a typo in my posts, I might say something slangy, I might describe with large brush strokes and let the reader form their own painterly understanding of what I am trying to say, but Nathan doesn’t. Each word he types is precise, it describes with absolute certainty what his meaning is, and if not, it is corrected before the next word hits the page. With a process like this, and with posts as long as at least a thousand words, you can not say that he whips them out. Oh no, you can’t say that. Did I mention that we only have one computer?

There you have it.

I Know Nothing

One time, during a bike tour with my sister and her boyfriend, we saw an epic battle between a daddy long-leg spider and a wasp. We were stopped in the middle of nowhere, our thighs rubbery from riding against the wind, looking for a snack at a faded signs, marshmallows, and kerosene kind of market. We sat on the pavement, days of dust and grime preparing us to make ourselves comfortable no matter the terrain. With our legs splayed in the sun, a high-calorie munchie in one hand, and contented smiles across our faces, a tiny movement caught our eye.

My sister and I are suckers for animals, shamelessly anthropomorphizing any beastly interaction, entertaining ourselves endlessly with alley cats, roadside horses, stray dogs, squirrels, any being from the animal kingdom, so a scuffle between two insects meant intense inspection, an almost nose-grinding, close-up view of the action. What we saw was a wasp holding the leg of a daddy long-leg, or a daddy long-leg holding the leg of a wasp. We couldn’t be sure. But it seemed like a tie, a never-ending tug-of-war without an obvious favorite, without a forecasted winner. In fact the foes were so closely matched that, to our greatest disappointment, we were made to pedal away without celebrating a victory.

Fast forward ten years.

To our garden, at the height of summer, to a peeking under leaves, to a search for hidden strawberries to add to our loaded bowl. Hazy orange summer light, fuzzy hummy summer sounds, and another movement catches my eye. It’s another daddy long-leg versus wasp contest, this time atop the raspberry leaves, this time right over my shoulder, in my own backyard. A ripple moves through my body, anticipation of satisfaction rises. Now, finally, all these years later, with the entire afternoon before me to wait out the battle, I will discover how these torturous, lengthy tug-of-wars end.

But it was over within seconds.

The wasp swiftly lifted the spider, plucked off its legs, one by one, like a de-feathering a spindly chicken, and then ate the ball of spider body like an apple. Crunch, crunch, gone. The wasp flew away leaving only a stack of spider legs on the raspberry leaf.

I know nothing.

A ten minute break during a bike tour allows for a perspective too tiny to understand the larger picture. Apparently, at no point is a daddy long-leg a true competitor when facing a wasp. My sister and I just happened to see a faltering moment, a momentary anomaly. We were young and naive, unaware.

This is why old people don’t envy the young. Sure they might miss the agile, nubile bodies, but they never want to trade places, to trade minds, to exchange their wisdom and experience for youth. The smackdown between the wasp and the spider makes me wonder what else I don’t know, makes me search for what else I thought I knew but really didn’t.

I thought I didn’t want to be an artist. I saw my mother painting, carving out space in the back of our garage, moving car sponges and screwdrivers to make room for her palette and paints. I thought it looked like a struggle. I thought it looked penniless. So I studied other things. I went to a science based university. I memorized the periodic table, I worked math problems that stretched for pages. But my mother went on to show in museums, in galleries across the country, and during class, while the professor rattled on, my fingers led a life of their own. The margins of my notes held portraits of every student between my seat and the lectern. My heart rattled and turned over, like an old car sputtering to life. I thought I could choose a “real-career”. I didn’t know that art chooses you, and like the spider, we are helpless against it.

I know nothing.

In my twenties I thought if I were to have a kid I would do it differently than others around me. The child psychology and development part of this notion was vague, not clearly outlined, not even on the horizon really, but the part I was sure about was the aesthetics. I saw parents loaded down with pastel diaper bags. I saw yards and houses filled with primary-colored plastic and thought, yuck. I thought my house would be different. I thought my diaper bag would be svelte. I didn’t know how much I would love my children, how rocked I would be by their presence in my life. I didn’t know I would want to stuff my bag, to fill it with soft cotton, replacement outfits, and beloved tear-stopping toys. That the trappings that enhance a child’s happiness are weightless. I didn’t know I would want to purchase primary-colored plastic. To wait expectantly while she unwrapped something bouncy. I didn’t know that the love I felt would eclipse my aesthetic grumpiness, that the mountain of emotion would make me color-blind.

These are the first two examples that come to mind. I am almost loathe to look any further, to torture myself with the myriad ways in which I thought I knew something only to discover different. But knowing that they are there, dappling my past like sunlight, is actually a comfort. If it happened before, it is happening now. I don’t know anything, which means there is no cause for worry, for plans, no cause for mushing my reality into the mold of what I think I know, either about myself or the world at large.

If I know nothing I can follow my daughter’s lead, instead of lording over her with my years of experience, my arguable knowledge. If I know nothing I can look at the world with wonder, watch the birds in the cherry tree instead of quickly passing with a cell phone to my ear.

If I know nothing then everything is new, nothing is decided, and everything is possible.