A Cherry Blossom Morning
My daughter has started sleepwalking. Her urge to pee wakes her, but when she gets out of bed, she is clearly confused. You can talk to her, her eyes are open, but you can tell she is not fully present and the next day she will have no memory of it. She runs through the apartment with her pants down going from bathroom to bedroom to bathroom to living room to bedroom to bathroom to bedroom until my wife or I guides her to the toilet and then back to bed. It’s not common, but has happened a few times recently. Last night, she sat on the toilet in her undies and peed through them! The internet says it is a “normal” thing kids do. Maybe triggered by stress or lack of sleep? But my daughter gets plenty of sleep. Maybe she’s triggered by vicarious stress from her parents? My daughter also has a classmate whom she considers a close friend in the hospital. Maybe, that’s it?
Neither me or my wife ever recall sleepwalking as kids.
I, however, remember being unusually sensitive as a child. In seventh grade, each week we had to find and collect ten vocabulary words from reading outside of class - so newspapers, magazines, etc. I remember reading my parents’ Newsweek and just welling up with tears at the horrors reported. It seemed like people hurt each other all the time and everything was designed to encourage and perpetuate suffering. I struggled to complete the vocabulary collection assignment because I kept dropping my magazine to cry and moan quietly in my room at the cruelty of it all. Eventually, like most little boys (and I assume little girls), I learned to man up and harden my heart and get tough and do my duty and find those vocab words wherever they might be.
Before I got there, though? I discovered I could find most of what I needed in Calvin and Hobbes comic strips. When other friends were sad, I would loan them one of my Scholastic Calvin and Hobbes collections.
Eventually, sometime in college, probably after I got gung-ho Jesus, I regretted embracing not being bothered as an approach to the problem inherent in living with others, and have been trying ever since to open up and feel more fully.
I don’t want my kids to suffer. But I also don’t want them to ever shrug off caring about others. It’s a tricky balance. On the one hand, you don’t want your kid peeing in the closet, on the other, you don’t want them to grow up with a heart of stone. I think the answer is to give them as many hugs as you can whenever you can. Though I admit, I think that’s the answer to every parenting dilemma.
The Great Substack Short Story Challenge 2 has come to a close.
tied every disparate thread together with a fantastic closing chapter. If you recall, I wrote the first chapter and each week another fabulous fiction writer added their own spin. I've genuinely enjoyed reading all the mutations and twists and turns. Check it out! Please heart and like and comment and share.
Finally, this morning has been absolutely fantastic. We woke early, slid our kids into rain jackets and rain boots, grabbed Starbucks sandwiches, drove to West Potomac Park beside the Tidal Basin, and snagged a rare open parking spot near the bridge. The rain had paused and we were able to meander through the cherry blossoms in full bloom when it wasn't so crowded. The kids loved it. And we were back home and in bed by 9 am, parents (almost) sleeping, kids laying on parents and watching Blaze and the Monster Trucks, our lattes waiting for us on the bedside tables - ready for when we roll over. Life is grand.
This probably places further toward the heart-of-stone end of the spectrum, but I love frustrating my kids. I’m hoping that if they can learn to deal with disappointment early and well, they’ll have some hope of avoiding the various addictions rooted in instant gratification.
I realize this is not what you’re talking about at all. But I do have a similar impulse when it comes to gradually exposing them to the suffering endemic to being human in this world. Not to say, look kid, life’s a bitch and then you die. But rather, please notice how fortunate we are, respective to the horrors endured by our fellows. The effort will always be, for myself as well as for the kids I’m raising, to use this awareness to cultivate the twin virtues of gratitude and sympathy. And then maybe we can help mitigate just a little bit of all that sorrow, here and there.
That was so lovely how you connected the grand dilemmas of parenting- perhaps one of the very fundamental ones of how to teach them to care but not so much that they taken on undue suffering - with finding joy in the small and sweet routines, all in one post. Every day as a parent is a good one if we find at least one such joyful moment in the day... too much parenting otherwise simply becomes transactional.
Thank you also for the generous mention. It’s been sucha delight being and becoming part of this community!