Daniel came home from baseball in a funk. The umpire made bad calls. He got hit with the ball twice, once in the
helmet on a bad pitch, once in the cup on a bad bounce. Their side never got past first base, though they
played their best. He struck out at the end of the game. After
moping about for a good while with this cloud over his head, unwilling to
practice piano, feeling put upon by life and high expectations, he came up with
a long, furiously delivered list of things he was existentially not happy
about.
(1) There is no fun
in games where the rules change in the middle, or where there are no consistent
or enforceable rules because there are no officials and everyone just does what
they want until there is no possible outcome and everyone disbands. These games are unjust and a huge
disappointment. [This has been a
long-running theme this year: unsatisfactory pick-up games at recess; but
somehow that day’s game of baseball became emblematic of the injustice of bad or
absent officiating generally.]
(His middle name is “Justice”; what did we expect?)
(2) Why is life all
about work and being too busy? It
shouldn’t be that way. There should be
more time for recreation and having real fun.
[Good point.]
(3) Why does
everything cost money? And why isn’t
there ever enough money? Why is it so
hard to get money? [Good question.]
(4) We should be able
to make people come into our life when we really need them. [Actually, that does sometimes happen… but what do you mean?]
(5) He wishes he had
more friends, people to play with. Really,
he wishes he had a sibling. [True tears were
falling.] With a sibling,
when dad and I are too busy to play a game, he’d have someone to play with and
not have to hang around being bored all by himself. [Ouch.]
So. Everything I was
planning to accomplish last night… making progress on the knitting puzzle,
getting the dishes done, rehearsing the song I’m working on, hula-hooping… that
whole constellation of things I needed to do…
I swept those off the table and let myself imagine what might actually
belong in that space.
Let’s bake a batch of cookies, shall we? And so we did. Daniel interpreted the recipe, did all the
measuring and stirring, rolling the balls of dough in sugar and cinnamon, and flattening
the balls on the cookie sheet with the bottom of a drinking glass. I did the prep, used the hand-held mixer on
the wet ingredients and removed the hot cookie sheets from the oven. Dad came in pretending he was going to eat all
the cookies before they had sufficiently cooled, and we shooed him away. Like the old days. It had been a long, long while, in kid-time,
since we’d made cookies together.
While tucking him in, I spoke the usual endearments and
kissed that spot just below his ear, where I also like to be kissed, my
favorite spot. Beautiful boy, mama loves
you. “I liked making cookies,” he
sighed. “And I’m not sad anymore.”
Same here, kid.
Man, Daniel's litany of disappointments with the universe reminded me so much of myself when I was his age that it just about knocked the wind out of me. (Not the part about wanting a sibling; I had one and I've always been just fine with being alone besides. But the other stuff ... I totally remember that sense of helpless, "Why's it gotta be this way?" frustration when better alternatives seem so obvious to you.)
ReplyDeleteHe's really lucky to have parents who work so hard to make his private corner of the world as cheerful, comfortable, and full of love as possible, to help push away whatever worries he has about the rest of the planet. I was lucky enough to have similarly awesome parents, and I have no idea how I could possibly have navigated the world without them. It's a hard road when you take life's injustices to heart so much and you can't keep from taking it personally that the world doesn't always (or even often) behave in the just, compassionate, loving ways that seem like such a no-brainer to you. But I can tell you from experience that having parents who'll drop what they're doing to help refocus you on the ways your own life is wonderful makes all the difference in helping you cope--and it helped me grow up to realize that the best any of us can likely do is to make the lives of those in our immediate vicinity as happy, comfortable, and loving as we can, even if we can't overhaul the human race to the degree we want. Daniel's a lucky kid indeed.
What that Willie guy said. :)
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