As I tap on my keyboard, rain pounds the skylights. Moments ago, the intolerable South Carolina heat melted into a torrential downpour. Lightening frizzes the afternoon sky; the heavens grumble as gods clear their voice. This is a summer gift -- wrapped in heavy dark clouds and delivered at the end of a searing day -- an afternoon thunder storm, and in its glorious wake, ion-smelling air rinsed clean of humidity, if only for a little while.
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I've collected so many great kid questions that I've divided them up into three different Perfectly Normal installments. This column includes the "Am I normal?" questions. It will be followed by a future column on building sexual vocabulary and then finally, part three... fascinating questions.
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Tomorrow Grace will turn six. Six years ago today I was waiting for my life to begin, although the life I was waiting for and the life I got turned out to be two entirely different things. Six years ago today I was watching my sister weed the garden and repaint an old family rocking chair for the baby's room. I was napping and peeling beets and swimming in a clear and quiet pond until dark.
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They say "Little kids, little problems; big kids, big problems." The expression really bugged me when I was the weary mother of little kids; who's to say my sleepless nights and my clamorous kids aren't a big problem to me?! But the tunnel vision of those baby days has broadened and I've gained some useful perspective. As my own children turn too-quickly into big kids and I catch a glimpse of what's to come I try neither to sentimentalize the past nor fret about the future; three recent documentaries -- My Toxic Baby; Latching On; and Motherland -- remind us just to live these days with our children the best we can.
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The only constant in parenting is change. A good friend said that to me years ago and I think of it often. The child I live with is literally a different person than he was a few months ago, just as he was a few months before that. He has different interests, different priorities, and -- most recently and the hardest to get used to -- a different temperament. No wonder I so often say the exact wrong thing! I'm still getting to know this new person and it's an awkward, ungainly process. I like him, though. He's smart and quick-witted, and usually easy to forgive.
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