Published in The Fauquier Times-Democrat Weekend on July 8, 2011
I think of my six children in pairs. The two eldest girls were born in Long Island, New York. Technically, at ages 21 and 18, they are women, but that sounds weird to say that I have adult children since they are both in college. There are the two teenaged boys born in Northern California, ages 16 and 13, who are in high school and middle school respectively. And finally, there are the last two, born in Ohio: a girl who just turned nine and a boy who is six.
One would think with this record of producing two children per state we might have been hesitant to move again, but after six years in Virginia, this is proving to be a fairly safe place to live.
I call the last two “The Stragglers” because they emerged on the scene twelve and fifteen years after the first child. With my Stragglers, I’ve gotten to experience parenting a second time around. I wouldn’t say it’s like parenting afresh; it’s more like pulling some leftovers out of the fridge just before they mold. They might look presentable because they were (perforce) popped into the microwave, but on the inside, this stuff knows that it is old and wilted. Also, as its parenting techniques are under constant surveillance by the older children (hereafter referred to as The Originals), not to receiving their unsolicited and expert advice on the care and rearing of youngsters, this leftover parenting material can sometimes suffer the effects of uneven heating. There may be pockets that are cold, but occasionally, the leftovers inexplicably explode.
The Stragglers have done things in much the same way as the older children, except that (according to The Originals) they get away with capital crimes, do not work as much or as hard as they did/do at this tender age, have poor eating habits, and have been given no standards to achieve.
Ah, the joys of parenting, again. It’s like bringing the boxer back into the center of the ring while he is yet reeling from the last blows he received. Still, it has its moments that make it all worthwhile. Children in the house are the best home entertainment systems invented.
I remember when my youngest daughter was three or four, she began to see me as some sort of superfluous artifact. If my husband were offering me a goodbye kiss, she would dart in between us, and give me a shove. With her arms wrapped around his neck, she would glance back at me and shout, “Get away from me, you crazy old woman!” This was uproariously funny. The first time.
Soon enough, that stage came to an end. Who knows? I may have hurried it along into obsolescence. We all know we’re a little crazy, and most of us realize that we are old. We just don’t need it to be trumpeted out by others, no matter how close the relationship.
By the time she was in kindergarten, she seemed to have outgrown her Daddy’s Girl Syndrome. She brought home the classic portrait: The stick figure family. Everyone had some distinguishing characteristic. For example, she had drawn her eldest sister with loads of curly hair and her eldest brother was wearing glasses. I don’t recall how I knew who I was in her picture. Perhaps I was wearing an apron, or perhaps, by this time, she had relinquished her claims and allowed me to be paired back with her dad, the lone towering figure in her drawing. He was the only one who had a facial expression. She had given him angry eyebrows.
This is not to give the impression that my husband is a grouch and that I am Mrs. Cheery Sunshine. When my middle son was a couple of years old, he made an astute observation: whenever my eyebrows furrowed, many unpleasant side effects ensued. He figured if he could stop the expression, he could stop the chain reaction. Whenever he sensed displeasure or impending wrath, he would take his thumb and desperately apply it upwards at the center of my forehead, wailing, “Don’t get angry! Don’t get angry!” The Lord has designed children to be so cute that it’s hard to be angry with them for too long.
I first chuckled when I saw the drawing with my husband’s eyebrows, but I was a little disturbed too. (More so than usual, anyway.) You know how they say there is a kernel of truth in every hostile joke? It was late on a Friday night that I showed this revealing family portrait from the eyes of a five-year-old to my husband.
The next morning, without so much as a discussion, my husband located and popped the spare car seats into his commuter car. He had errands to run, but he decided to take The Stragglers with him. They had breakfast out and visited the pet store.
I guess what they say is true: “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Much was restored that morning – relationships and eyebrow placement.
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