Going Along

Things are getting busier the older Twila gets. It’s not that she’s involved in many out-of-home activities. Aside from preschool and a once-a-week music class, our time is our own. But we are even still in a new phase of energy and activity because Twila is growing in independence and wanting more and more to do by herself; to make decisions independently and to differentiate herself from me. And it’s a mixed blessing.

On the one hand Twila is getting very helpful around the house, eager to try cooking and folding laundry, cleaning mirrors, hammering nails to hang pictures, shoveling the walkway, picking out her clothes and dressing, all by herself. The likelihood of a task getting done when she is assigned one is getting greater and greater. On the other hand, it is harder to monitor her safety and the safety of Jada since in a single unsupervised moment, she might be found climbing high on a step ladder, Ryan’s new hammer in hand, swaying precariously above her curious sister. So I have had to step-up my attention, dialing up my watchful gaze, and in that way things have gotten busier.

The laundry was facing me when I opened the laundry chute this morning; literally looking out from the space that is supposed to be a chute. But the chute only acts as a functional chute when there is room for the clothing to fall down the shaft of the chute. If, in fact, there is so much laundry that it is packed into the chute, jammed into a giant, dense column of laundry, one cannot chute old, dirty clothing, one has to stare it in the face with hands full of more dirty laundry having no place to chute it.

So I started the washing machine.

I have learned from repeated experience that when the laundry chute is that full, it takes exactly two giant, or three reasonably sized loads to wash all those clothes. Also from experience I know that it takes the better part of a week to get all that laundry folded and put away. I have also learned from recent experience that Twila’s eagerness to help fold can be in fact helpful but can also result in losing certain articles of clothing for months in various wrong drawers and crevices of her messy room.

The mess in Twila and Jada’s room seems to spill out into the rest of the house like creeping ivy. This is one area of the house Twila seems wholly uninterested in helping clean. She is seemingly unable to make a single stack of books from the massive pile on her floor. Somehow this, and not the many more complicated tasks she begs to undertake, is out of her skill set. But I’ve decided that her interest in helping and taking the initiative in projects is a positive thing even if her help doesn’t always get us to the destination I see as the most important.

I took an impromptu road trip with my daughters last week and had no destination at all in mind. We set out to go to the gym at eight forty five in the morning and five minutes into our ten minute drive Jada fell deeply asleep. I have never been one to wake a sleeping child. I would sooner lower the shades in the face of an alien invasion than wake a sleeping baby to run.

So we drove.

We drove north on a wide busy road that turned, before too long, into a small, quiet road that channeled an ever-dwindling stream of traffic further and further away from civilization. Before I knew it, we were driving past trees instead of buildings, restaurants and gas stations. The trees turned into forests as the northern suburbs gave way to Northern Minnesota. The trees opened sporadically to showcase wide expanses of marsh, and the occasional frozen lake. Stubborn geese and black birds took flight from the cold, barren surfaces, circling the chilly skies in search of stray mice and bugs.

Watching those black birds as I drove still further north, my daughters quietly resting in the back seat, I thought of an afternoon much warmer than this, some five years back. I was walking the streets of south Minneapolis when I was pregnant with Twila. I spent much of that pregnancy thinking about my birthdaughter Nicole and wondering if it was possible to love another child as much as I loved her.

As I walked down the alley, the sun just setting on a warm June evening, a huge blackbird suddenly took flight from the backyard to my right, a strange high pitched squeaking coming from it as it flapped. It flew straight in front of me and I could see, just feet over my head the source of the squeaking. The black bird had a tiny, baby rabbit clutched in its talons.

I was stunned, hardly believing what I was witnessing right before my eyes. I looked to the right where the bird had just flown from and there in its wake, a mother rabbit was bounding after it. It reached the fence and stopped, looking after the bird and the bunny, helplessly. It was uncharacteristically unaware of my presence and didn’t try to hide, run, or hold still as a statue under my gaze. It panted, staring wild eyed after the bird.

I stood looking from the mother rabbit to the black bird, winging off, high into the sky. I felt sick as I stood, as helplessly as the mother, watching her young stolen away. I clutched my pregnant belly, feeling unusually protective of my unborn baby.

It’s a terribly helpless feeling to have children. Loving your children is a kind of love that overtakes your entire system. It overrides your sense of ration and logic. This love replaces good sense and self preservation with wild, selfless passion. Mother animals throughout all of creation would sacrifice their own lives to protect their children.

It’s terrible to know that no matter how hard you try to protect your children, there are certain threats out of the realm of your control. As much as we want to we cannot be everywhere at once. We cannot look after our children every minute their entire lives.

No matter how much I watch and teach and oversee, I know these days of having my daughters resting safely in the backseat of my car are finite. I realized it as I drove, watching the sun rise higher into the eastern sky and I was overwhelmed with gratitude for this time when my biggest challenge is keeping the house or the car quiet enough for Jada as she naps, or trying to convince Twila that nine thirty in the morning is too early for macaroni and cheese with hotdogs.

Twila is learning how to play Old Maid, Crazy Eights, and Chess and how to make mixed media works of art and I am grateful for that too. Jada is starting to bat away Sippy Cups, insisting on drinking ice water out of open glasses. I am simultaneously in love with the new independence and abilities our daughters gain as they grow, and sentimental about how quickly the years of youth, innocence and dependence pass by.

So we go along, playing games and making art, reading new books and getting to know each other better and better; trying to be patient with each other, trying to create peace in our home as we all grow and change and learn new abilities. And I try to appreciate the ability I have to protect them almost entirely now. And I try not to worry too much about the future; about a time when I will have to trust them to recall the lessons we taught them; a time when they will have to rely on their own ability to protect themselves.