The weather yesterday morning was amazing. Piles of rain collapsed as if someone was actually pouring buckets down from the sky. I love days like that, have always loved the rain. I had a polka dot umbrella. RRBB had his Thomas attire. We stepped outside and walked around the neighbourhood until it was just too cold and we had to come inside.
There’s a moment, and I wish I could pinpoint it, when my son discovers something new–and it’s not even if it’s new truly, it might just be new that day–and he explodes with a sense of wonder that I wish I could emulate. The stairs we’ve gone up and down a hundred times, well, it’s the 101st that really matters. An airplane, awesome. A garbage truck? We might not survive the excitement. And then we come crashing down, clashing a little, the two of us, a temper tantrum, some screaming, dumping of an entire box of organic smoothie on the kitchen floor, and all wonder is lost in an attempt to hold on to your patience and capture just a little bit of understanding.
Because, here’s my biggest lesson this weekend–sometimes your kids will simply not do what you want them to do.
Sometimes they will do the exact opposite of what you want them to do.
We are all exhausted, I think, from a hectic summer capped off by my entire household, myself excluded (I was the ONLY healthy one–what’s that??), coming down with some awful plague last weekend at the cottage. Terrible virus that lasted days, both RRHB and RRBB were inconsolable for many days straight. For a moment, I thought I might lose my mind, and then comes that moment where you break your life down into manageable half-hour chunks like Hugh Grant in About a Boy, and that’s how you get to the end of the day. Through an awful car ride home.
Still, it was a lovely week off. We took the boy to the Ex for the first time. The first ride, his first Merry-Go-Round, he said, “I like that.” (Which is his favourite saying these days, that and it’s exact opposite, “No like that.”) He whipped around in some car with his father with an irrepressible grin on his face. That moment terrified me, in fact, his utter lack of terror when it comes to just about anything terrifies me every day. He will dive off any surface, shouting, “jump!” and into your arms, climb any ladder, head up a playground meant for kids three time his size with no fear whatsoever. He gets hurt. He cries. Then he kaboomies (a game that involves jumping on anything, a bed, a couch, his parents, and saying, “kaboomie!”) all over again.
Wonder. No fear. Courage.
These are all qualities that I admire in my almost-two-year-old. Bits and pieces of his confidence that I wish I could tuck into my own life and be ultimately more successful.
Perhaps that’s not the lesson for the weekend at all, that it’s hard work always tunnelling their energies, but embracing those bits of childhood that enable your kids to be fearless into your own life. Who knows where the wonder will take you, through the rain, perhaps, but at least it’s never dull.