Because in fact it can really suck being a kid

Dear Blog,

OK, so last week I got a bit drunk and went running around in the snow going I still believe in Narnia la la la! and then blogged about it. Now I want to clarify something here that might not be clear from my last post, but which I don't think contradicts it (not that I am against contradictions, per se, and I would never diss cognitive dissonance): I really don't have a lot of patience with nostalgia for childhood. I'm convinced that anybody who says how wonderful it is being a child doesn't actually remember being one at all. Not to say that childhood can’t be full of happy times and love and laughter and enchantment - mine was - but even the happiest children have no real choices or power in a world designed for people much larger and older than them, and they remain totally dependent on these whimsical, controlling Big People who must often seem not to have their interests (as children understand them) at heart. Small children are learning for the first time about death and loss and compromise and that the world is a planet and the universe is vast and they themselves not the center of everything after all but tiny and finite and temporary - in which case, eggs for breakfast every day and ONLY THE BLUE SOCKS AAAARGH NO NOT THOSE ONES THE OTHER ONES seem not such unreasonable demands, there's only so much wackiness a kid can take, after all.

LittleK is almost two, and he still enjoys books about things in the world, things that are familiar, without needing a lot of frills like, oh, plot. When you've been a person in the world for less than two years, the familiar is still new and still needs a lot of thinking about, after all. So trucks and frogs and parents and children and snow and trains and food are very, very interesting topics. A story about a little bunny going to bed, and all the things in his room, is great stuff. Pictures of animals are fascinating. A truck getting stuck in the mud is some serious drama. And then there are all those words, strung into all those sentences, and some of those words are words he's never heard so there is a lot to figure out and make sense of. The Gruffalo is great but LittleK doesn't really get the mouse's cleverness in fooling everybody, he just thinks it's awesome that THERE IS A MOUSE!

Now LittleJ, he is three-and-a-half so he knows about trucks and frogs and parents and kids and that's all fine, he is still happy to sit and listen to a story about a truck in the mud, or a caterpillar eating a bunch of different foods. But he will ask for a story again and again if it has MAGIC in it. Or dinosaurs. Or a horrible villain, or a battle, or something hilariously gross. He wants conflict, he wants plot. He is ready for the boundaries of the world to be stretched. He is ready to be scared and surprised and amazed. Soon he'll be ready to cry over Charlotte's death in Charlotte's Web, to cheer on Pippi Longstocking, to peer in all the small corners of our house looking for Borrowers. I am probably way too excited about all the books they have in store for them, and corny as it sounds, I really do believe those books will be their best guides through the tumult of childhood, nurturing their empathy and their sense of wonder and the life-saving gift of being able to put it into words, or better yet, put it in a story, all the things that amaze and terrify and overwhelm you at any age.

So here is something that happened one night a few months ago, at bedtime. LittleJ came to me with a burst balloon and told me, his voice shaking with tears he could barely hold back, that it had to go in the garbage. OK, I said. His voice broke: It’s too sad, he said. I told him he didn’t have to throw it in the garbage if it was making him too sad. He shook his head. It had to go in the garbage. OK, I said again. I held his hand. He put it in the garbage, and collapsed against my leg, sobbing. I carried him to bed and lay down with him. He cried for 25 minutes. Finally he settled down and lay still against me for a few minutes. I thought he might have fallen asleep but then he said, “I want to go get the balloon.” So we went back to the garbage and got it and I rinsed it and dried it, and he went back to bed clutching it in his hand, and fell asleep holding it against him.

Needless to say, over the next week or so, we read and watched The Red Balloon daily, LittleJ with his brow furrowed like it is taking all his concentration to absorb whatever that story has to offer, about friendship and loss and cruelty and magic. I think it gets easier with practice, this being human in the world thing. Which isn't to say it ever gets easy. You don't have to be three to have a hard time letting go even when you know it's time, and sure, there might still be nights you go to sleep clutching the ruined rag of something that was so big and bright and glorious in the beginning. But I have always armed myself with stories, to get me through the hard parts and to help me find the best parts, and it's all I know how to teach my kids, if I am teaching them anything at all. Balloons burst. People can be cruel and life can be lonely. But maybe all the balloons in Paris will come find you out in your darkest hour and lift you up into the sky.

(Crap. I'm teaching them the wrong things, aren't I?)

Anti-nostalgically yours,

Catherine