you are invited to a
tournament!

gide code:

Saturday 18th, 11:00 am

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This is the invitation (complete with picture) Liam and I typed up yesterday. He wants to send it to his two friends. In the picture he's decked out in the closest he could get to knight regalia--oversized shirt, scarf, crocs, broom-stick-turned-jousting-lance. He wanted to copy the flier and post it along the main thoroughfare just outside our neighborhood.

I'm not sure that's such a good idea, I told him.

Why?

Well, we don't want just anyone coming to the jousting tournament, do we?

I imagined various odd people turning into our driveway on the 18th, perhaps mistaking his flier for some coded yard-sale sign.

Liam thought for a moment. Well, he said. We could just post it around our neighborhood.

Maybe just on the tree outside our house? I suggested.

But Mama, his voice rose in distress. Then no one will come! How can we have a knight's tournament without a crowd of people?

Liam's ideas have always been larger than what's actually possible--dream big!--is his motto, and I hope it will serve him well in life. When Liam was three Scott spent an entire morning constructing a "power pack" for him out of a wooden box and some paper towel rolls; it came complete with straps for easy mounting to the back. The power pack was constructed to propel Liam through outer space and back again. He's a literal kid, though. He wants things to actually work and gets incredibly frustrated and disillusioned when they don't. He wasn't happy with imagining that the power pack would take him into space, he sincerely believed he could make something that would, and almost sobbed with frustration when it didn't.

I love his faith in what's possible. While I have many times been tempted to squash down some of his ideas (too complicated; too time-consuming; too "out there") he has consistently insisted we can put them into motion. Make clay amulets and attempt to sell them at a yard sale? Of course we can! (And we did.) Turn our little red Subaru into a flying machine with some lumber and foam? Absolutely! Hold a jousting tournament for a couple of six-year olds? Yes, why not? (With some rules, of course.)

His mind is overflowing with ideas; they propel him (sometimes frenetically) forward from one thing to the next. We try to teach him that all things are possible with hard work and patience, lessons he has a little trouble learning. A cynic might say he will be eternally disillusioned by how easily possibilities are hampered by reality; whether by laws of gravity or mundane social constraints. I say he's a dreamer and the world needs more of them.

Setting: my office on a warm Friday afternoon. The rain from last night has blown away the clouds and all the leaves are accented in delicately drawn lines of light. It’s a perfect day—the kind of day that makes you want to slip on shorts and anticipate the long, warm days of summer. Student R. is seated in front of me. He’s tall, with glasses and has several tattoos on his forearms and upper arms. He’s polite, well-spoken—an earnest and sensitive young man. He feels strongly about religion and his mother, calling her the “strongest woman I know” and his face softens when he speaks of her. I mention the fact that he has missed many classes and he apologizes. He’s in the ROTC program and I often see him in fatigues with his name sewn onto the front of his uniform.

I’m trying to make all my classes, he tells me. But, and he takes a deep, tired breath, they’re deploying me in April.

There’s an awkward silence as I try and digest the news. The sight of his backpack, filled with pens poking here and there out of the pockets makes me suddenly sad--sad and angry, too. I study his face, looking for his feelings.

I’m so sorry to hear this, I tell him. Then I worry: sorry? Was this the right thing to say?

I know, I know, he says. I really want to finish school. I’m constantly out of classes for one thing or another—physicals, signing insurance papers, health forms. I keep telling them I need to get to class but they keep telling me this is more important.

What will you do about college? I ask him.

They tell me I can finish when I get back.

I want to say, who are they to tell you this? But I bite my tongue.

After we talk for a few minutes I watch him leave, backpack slung over his shoulder, books under one arm; a student like all the others, yet suddenly so different, too. He turns the corner and vanishes--through the door, and out into the March sunshine.

In talking with my mom today about some of the difficult issues we're dealing with these days involving Liam, school, food, etc. I got to thinking a little about how one of the trying and also rewarding things about being a parent of more than one child is that you end up never really parenting the same way twice. I do know some parents out there who seem to parent the exact same way for each child (brother slept through the night at three months therefore, by God, sibling shall too) but most of the parents we know have adapted and refined their repertoire of parenting techniques to fit the developing needs of each child. In doing this you soon realize that you are capable of so many different ways of responding to your children's needs--they are varied and can be frustrating but in the process you learn so much more about yourself and what you're capable of, as a parent and as a human being.

I started out with Tessa intending to try the same things on her; the sling, for instance. I always called Liam my "sling baby." From the tender age of six days I tucked him into his sling and walked around the house and he was in heaven. The sides of the cloth almost enclosed him completely, and as I walked with him I could feel the delicious weight of his small body swinging in front me. He would make little chirping sounds in his sleep. He could sleep for hours in the sling, happily oblivious of the world around him. When he was two weeks old we tried to take him out into the world for the first time in his car seat. We clicked his seat into place atop the store cart and strode into the brightly lit building. I was giddy with excitement--this was the first time I had been out and about in public since Liam's birth. Liam, however, took one look at the bright lights, the vast noisiness around him and his tiny face turned bright red. He exploded and screamed and screamed his anger at the world. Only when we hastily wheeled him out of the store and placed him back into the van, where he continued to wail protests until he fell asleep, utterly exhausted, would he stop. I collapsed against the seat next to him in the van, still aching and sore from the quick march out of the store. I was near tears, and breathless with emotion at this first display of sensory overload in my small baby. Having known him for only two weeks, I hadn't seen that side of him yet. Was he in pain? Had I damaged him somehow by exposing him to the bright lights and smells and sounds of a mega home-improvement store before he was ready?

I didn't try the sling on Tessa until she was almost two weeks old. Trying to get her to sleep one morning I decided to try putting her into Liam's old sling. Surely this would work! I imagined the chores I would get done, moving around the house with Tessa fast asleep against me. But as soon as I tried to slide her in she stiffened her body and flailed out her arms in desperation. Each time I tried to lower her inside she stiffened; then she cried. My people-person daughter, who from such an early age sought out the faces of those around her wanted nothing to do with the solitary space the sling represented. In the grocery stores she turned to people, challenging them to make eye contact with her, to smile at her, to show her a connection. I had to come up with different ways to try and calm her into sleep (many of which didn't work: the child seemed to need so little sleep). Today, in restaurants, she'll pop her head up over the back of the booth and smile at the people behind her: Hi, I Tessa, she'll say cheerfully. What's your name?

Liam's propensity to be highly over-cautious and anxious has protected him (and us) from having to worry too much about typical fears and lulled us into complacency with Tessa. We never childproofed much of anything when he was a toddler. One sharp sound of warning or gentle instruction about the dangers of an outlet or of a passing car would move him to tears and he would be forever wary from that day on. Tessa, however, is always pushing the limits. I find myself worrying more about her as she gets older; wishing too that she wouldn't be so friendly with everybody. I teach her ways to be adventurous and cautious at the same time; we constantly watch her gleefully running from us in public places.

I can hang back a little with Tessa, parent her a little differently; I do activities with her I could never do with Liam at that same age (take her to story times and delight in her clapping and interacting with the children around her), yet I do things with Liam that I will probably never do with Tessa (our quiet, contemplative nature walks; the careful crafts; the endless amounts of history and science we read together even when he was three, his still-wet-from-the-bath head resting against my shoulder). And I parent the two kids together differently, too, then I do when I have one child to myself. I will forever keep my memories of tiny Liam in his sling, and the ones I have of Tessa's wide gummy baby smile at a lady in the grocery checkout line. They are such different children; that's just the wonderful magic of it all.

Setting: minivan at 3:15, yesterday. Liam's been working on his famous Famous Americans project and has been thinking quite a bit about Amelia Earhart and her disappearance over the warm Pacific.

Liam: Amelia Earhart is one of the mysteries of the world, isn't she?

Me: Yes she is! No one knows what happened to her.

Liam: I think I know.

Me: You do?

Liam: Yes, I think her airplane crashed into the ocean and disappeared under some rocks.

Me: Could be, perhaps.

Liam: What are some other mysteries of the world?

Me: Well, Stonehenge is one. No one knows who built it, or why.

Liam: That's not a mystery of the world, Mama, it's a mystery of England. And anyway, I know why Stonehenge was built.

Me: You do?

Liam: It was built for one of those...what do you call those parties people give when someone has died?

Me: A funeral?

Liam: Yes! It was built for a funeral but then the English people decided to turn it into a flower garden.

Me: Where did you learn that?

Liam: I didn't learn it! I was born knowing it. Don't you know, I was born knowing all kinds of mysteries of the world!

Visible women

I continue to be haunted by the invisible women I see around me on campus. On average, I have more men in my classes this semester then ever before; many have beat the odds, some still won't. They laugh, they joke; some work hard, some don't. Behind them the invisible women in their lives--their mothers, sisters, grandmothers, aunts, surface from time to time, voices over their shoulders telling them to push on, work hard, and keep their chins up. They are relentless in propelling their boys forward--ever forward--into opportunities they themselves didn't--and couldn't--have.

This semester, though, I have more women then men in one particular English class. Two are mothers, one of a four-month old boy, the other of a seven-year old boy. The third is pregnant with her first--a son--and due at the end of May. She never goes anywhere without her bottle of water, is a very hard worker, proud of her pregnant belly, and careful to dress in very hip and stylish maternity clothes (I've always been in awe of pregnant women who can wear tight shirts over their swollen bellies and look chic). In contrast, the mother of the small baby is very young herself and uncertain about which role to occupy in her own life. She frequently talks during class to the young man next to her, and seems to have trouble paying attention on a regular basis. She's prone to spontaneous outbursts about things that have nothing to do with what we're talking about. I often find myself irritated by her lack of attention. Somedays she fiddles with her cell phone during class, other days she's writing notes to the young man.

I feel for her, though; she is so obviously caught between roles. She talks about her baby son as if he were a doll or plaything, yet she isn't fully at ease in the college classroom either. She seems to me a student-at-risk. Stay in college I want to say to her over and over again, until the words become her own mantra.

The mother of the older boy has had seven years to settle into her role. She has come back to school again at a time when things are more manageable for her. Her son is in school now and old enough to appreciate her return to college, and what it might mean for the both of them. College might become more than a second-chance for him, but instead an attainable and welcomed fact of life.

The young woman expecting her first is enveloped in that clichéd glow of pregnancy. Other students give her too much space in the classroom. She sits surrounded by an almost tangible aura of contentment and self-assurance. I imagine her son curled up inside of her, fluttering and kicking; waiting to be born, impatient to learn.

I hope that in a few years time I will see all three of them walk across the stage at graduation. Their sons will be watching from the bleachers as their mothers' names are called; as they step out into the light, visible in new ways now. More importantly, they will be able to pass on the greatest legacy of all to their sons: the ability to one day say to them: I have done that too, I have been there, look what I did.

Thank you, thank you Cinnamon-gurl for picking me for a Thinking Blogger Award--it was especially ironic for me to receive this honor yesterday, on a day when I felt like my thinking powers had gone right out the window.

You know those days when you feel especially inarticulate and bumbling and you just can't wait for the kids to fall asleep so you can plop yourself in front of the television, perhaps with a large glass of red wine and some leftover Valentine's Day chocolates (oh wait, I ate them all already) and legitimately turn off for awhile? Well, it was one of those...

I love this award because, as others have pointed out, it's both an award and a chance to link the blogging world to five other fine bloggers. All my regular reads make me think--constantly--so it's a bit unfair to single out five. But here are five bloggers who have made me think especially hard in February:

1. Phantom Scribbler; prolifically providing much to ponder--from book reviews, to parenting woes, to food concerns, to social conscience pieces... so much to read, so little time.

2. Scrivener at Scrivenings. His recent post Diss and Dat, a Narrative: The Undiscovered Country has given me much to reflect on. And reflect on. And reflect on.

3. Andrea, of A Garden of Nna Mmoy for much that she writes but in particular for this post which certainly gave me pause to think on many levels.

4. Esperanza's post on giftedness opened the floodgates for me and compelled me to put into writing my own current frustrations with schooling and "otherness."

5. I know she's been picked already, but cinnamon-gurl's travel narratives from her trip to South Africa filled my head with wonderful images. The combined effects of her great descriptive writing and stunning photographs were hard to shake.

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I just realized yesterday that my blog is officially (over) a year old! Looking back, I noticed that I first posted on February 15th over one year ago. I don't think I had any idea when I started blogging what it would come to mean to me.

Happy One-Year Anniversary World...!