There are few pure exhilarations of childhood one can still experience as an adult, and a snow day is one of them. School is cancelled as are any expectations that you have to go anywhere. Expectations are cancelled. How rare. How beautiful! As a teacher, I realize this is a gift that not all professions receive, and thus, I savor it gleefully and with gratitude. Sure, there are scheduled vacation days off, and the lived-for weekends, but those are always planned away with day trips or errands, catching up on projects or finally tackling the paperwork for taxes. A snow day, however, is free time -- really, truly free time -- that presents itself without advance warning; Mother Nature disallows us to "to do list" it away. It's breathing time -- ahhhhh. Exhale, and awake to daylight instead of an alarm . . . inhale, and smell the pancakes hubby is cooking for breakfast.
Today is actually Snow Day "take 2," and yesterday I waded into an attempt to foster play and communication between my two daughters who have spent our first three weeks at home politely giving each other space and carefully guarding each of their own territories. While my creative little activity didn't produce the results for which I hoped, it did dig out the issue. There were words of frustration from each of the gals, and tears (at different times), and conversations with Mom and then Dad (privately, one at a time), and then we allowed for some quiet room. By dinner they were sitting next to one another for the first time.
This morning at breakfast Baylor exclaimed that Anna made for her a bracelet and necklace. And so, their shared space is becoming much more than space. Ahhh. Exhale, again.
Told in short, it all sounds easy, but when in the middle of pouts and stomps (from the kids) (I try to save my idiocy for private when the kids are not looking), and not knowing what will be the outcome (or when), there is a heavy darkness of parenting doubt, worry, and exasperation. No matter how many times I cycle through the madness of being responsible for young people and come through on the other side of figuring out the problem and seeing resolution, my feeble mind continues to struggle when the problem phase resurfaces anew. You'd think the repetition would reassure that solution will always follow, but each new little conflict is always a mite bit different, and my human mind weak. I talk with lots of friends who are parents, and so, it seems this is all normal, but boy, that doesn't make it easy. When I was a kid I thought that people suddenly felt differently when they were "old," but it really does seem like just yesterday that I was the one worried about whether I would be the "blue" or the "red" when we played boardgames . . . or who's turn it is to pick whatever . . . when did I get old? And where is the omnipotence I'm sure my elders were gifted magically at a certain age?
But snow days give us time to sit in the messy moments and to come through them. To see learning and legitimate personal growth in our wee ones. And this is a good thing, because my two smart, strong-willed daughters have a good deal of energy and creating in their shared play room, and I'd love for them also to feel at peace in their snuggly beds when they put closure on the end of each day.
Sometimes it's about talking and teaching and showing. Sometimes it's about allowing time. Sometimes it's about letting a kid's awkwardness or hesitation or guilt be replaced with fun, activity, and laughter -- like playing in the snow to break the ice.
Every time my children toss off their wet mittens and hats after playing outside on a winter's day, I am reminded of my years playing with my dear sister-friend, Andrea (Hauser) Sutherland. Our old house has those wonderful, large floor vents just as did the Hauser home, and Mama Hauser always dried Ann and my soaked winter gear atop the metal grates. As a frequent visitor to Ann's home, I was always enamored with her large family, and specifically, that she was the baby of six. Another dear friend, Kara (Koester) Erdahl, is the baby of five. Large Catholic families -- I loved it! Being the oldest of three, I so envied them and thought that I would have a large family of my own when I grew up.
Decades later the reality set in that being a child of a large family was quite different than being the parent of one, and I kissed goodbye that "silly" childhood daydream. I needed my introvert time for creative projects, and reading, and contemplating world news . . . and then came home from Haiti with my mom a photo of a little girl. We later learned she did not need a family, but we were committed to becoming parents to a child or children who did need us. Here we are, with four kids who sometimes need us all at the same time, and I am overwhelmed while reminding them "One at a time," "Don't interrupt," "You'll get your turn," "You won't always get what you want, but you will always get what you need," and "'Fair' does not always mean 'same.'" There are interludes, such as this one, here, as I write, when the kids entertain themselves and/or each other, and I am able to retreat to my home office to revisit quotes I've torn from articles . . .
This one from psychologist William Bridges seems relevant to my musings of today -- "Genuine beginnings begin within us, even when they are brought to our attention by external opportunities." So, maybe it's not five or six kids, but four is a good number. A large family, multicultural experiences, using my own experience of having a complex family structure to guide and heal my own, new children -- it fits. Sure, it challenges my patience and intuition and confidence and any remote charade of wisdom, but maybe I'd been too careful, too neat, before.
In Andrew Solomon's recent Newsweek article he reflects on parenting, "I dwell too much in abstraction and the future, and parenting has taught me the present time that children require, where contentment, even rapture, reside."
And then we got a phone call -- another snow day tomorrow . . .
