Recently I’ve been frequenting the quaint and under-populated city streets of Atlanta, Georgia for various reasons, and I’ve noticed (aside from the superb maintenance and upkeep of the interstate system keeping the motor vehicles moving along nicely) the enormous amounts of graffiti that sprinkle the cement walls, garbage cans, bridges, and other empty surfaces on the east side of the A.T.L. Now, to some, graffiti is an eye-sore and a pain to clean-up/off, but to others (many others, I’d guess) it is a true art form. One has to be especially skilled with a certain artistic eye, mind, and hand to scratch, draw, or paint building walls with the marvelously detailed pictures and stories I’ve been seeing all over the eastside of the “dirty, dirty,” as some refer to it in their crazy lil’ rap songs. I’ve seen spectacular depictions of Bob Marley, Barack Obama, Humphrey Bogart, and some other old, dead white guy who was famous in the black-n-white-movie days smoking his ciggy. I’ve read deep messages scripted in brilliant colors along city buildings, and I’ve glimpsed some kid’s selected struggles scrawled alongside Interstate Twenty on my way to dinner. To be skilled in the genre of graffiti is truly an art form I do not and will not ever possess…unfortunately. Something my PhD preparation will not offer me in the near future…
Another art form I don’t think about often but recently experienced that I may never possess is the art of parenting. Or maybe more specifically, single-parenting. A.K.A., taking a thirteen-year-old, an eight-year-old, and a four-year-old to a gigantic water park by myself. Yes, friends, there are some things that even a PhD cannot prepare one for, and the skills needed to be a single mom in a water park with three children varying widely in age is one of those areas.
Because I had not been to Florida in so long to visit my precious niece and nephews, I told my brother that I would LOVE to take them all to the famous Shipwreck Island Water Park for a day of fun in the sun, and then back to the grandparents’ house for a spend the night party after our explorations on the beach. What a great idea…Hilary….for a crack addict! I know many of you on my list have children, so you’ll know what I mean when I say…sometimes kids don’t like each other. At all. I mean, if each of them had the choice, they’d all choose to be only children and I’m not just saying that. My older brother always felt that way (probably still does) but I never wanted him dead or shipped off or whatever he wanted for me, his sister four years his junior, who worshiped the ground he walked on, so I don’t understand the mentality of an absolute loathing for a younger or older sibling. Well…after spending twenty-four hours with my three babies, I kind of do now.
Inside the realm of education as teachers and teacher educators, we read, read, read about how we need to learn where children come from, how we should get to know children’s life experiences, get to know their cultures, backgrounds, beliefs, etc. We learn these things in order to better serve them in the classroom, to help shape the curriculum more to their needs and likings, and to build relationships with them while we’re in loco parentis (“in the place of the parent” for those of you who forgot your Latin roots) for the short time they enter our lives.
If you spent five hours with my three angels, you’d never guess they came from the same family while getting to know their backgrounds. Good lesson for me as an educator—apples don’t always fall directly—or even near—the tree. Sometimes those apples seem to be hurled across the farm, bounce through a raging river, and then land somewhere else…in someone else’s yard. The thirteen-year-old is this absolute beauty queen who is incredibly intelligent and is so old-soul-seeming at the chronologically and socially-constructed-assigned age of thirteen. She has a huge heart and will do anything for her two younger brothers…well, almost anything. She spends a lot of time babysitting them, so she is learning (as I did not get to) the art of mothering at an early age. The eight-year-old had to be an absolute mix-up because he is so much like me and not anything like my older brother, his father, that it constantly baffles me when I’m around him. He is actually more like me than I am like me: sensitive spirited, loves to entertain, loves to laugh, and definitely loves to cry. He looks just like me with his fair skin and freckles, and if that boy doesn’t have enough rest he is just like his aunt—meaning, we both need time by ourselves (my mom calls it ‘downtime’ to nicely describe my viscous wrath in a diplomatic way).
The littlest one. Well, I’m not sure how to describe him. Incredibly smart (as are the other two), a little ball of…full-throttled energy in both mind and spirit, and always vying for his family’s attention. Being the youngest in a family of five, the youngest one has learned that in order to gain attention from anyone in that busy family, he can just scream as loud as his miniature lungs will allow, causing the neighboring dogs to howl, or he can just walk up and punch you in the gut. It’s nice, really. He is a beautiful child.
So there I am on a Wednesday afternoon at the water park. With all three of them. By myself. Now I’ve been reading about children and their needs for at least nine years. I’ve read developmental theories, socio-cultural theories, studies on and about children, books; you name it, I’ve read it (OK, so I haven’t read What to Expect When You’re Expecting or all those other parenting books, but you know where I’m coming from here). And I love my three angels. I worship them, actually. When I’m with them—any or all—I think to myself, Yes, I want to be a mother one day because if I love these children this much, I can’t imagine how much I’d love one of my own. But like I said, I was at the water park with all three of them. By myself. At this water park some rides everyone can ride, some rides only the little ones can ride (the kiddy park, which is an enormous place with multiple pee-pools, slides, spurting fountains, mothers chasing babies-to-four-year-olds, and fathers with huge guts passed out in the sun chairs from all their supportive-parental-beer drinking), and then some rides are just for big kids and adults. So I’m with three children who represent each of these categories. The four-year-old can go on all the rides in the kiddy park and is only tall enough for a few of the big-kid rides, which look wonderfully enticing to him until we get in line for a long time, and he keeps lamenting, “Aunt Hirry, this was a very, very bad idea. I don’t think we should be waiting in this long line. It’s just a very, very bad idea. When will we get up there, Aunt Hirry?” and then hurls himself on the ground looking up at me with his precarious facial expressions. The eight-year-old can ride every ride in the park…and wants to…all day long. He, unfortunately, has to go with us to the little kid stuff because I can’t separate myself from them, and he is a pretty good sport the seventh time we get in the Lazy River to float around with the four-year-old. The thirteen-year-old? Well, she’s thirteen. She’s just lookin’ all hot in her lil’ bikini and making fun of the lifeguards with her immature aunt, smirking occasionally because of my absolute lack of knowledge in caring for children. (“Should we put more sunscreen on them now, Savannah? When do you think they’ll be hungry, Savannah? Why does Dawson keep punching me in the stomach? Why won’t Dawson listen to me? Do you think Brady’s feelings will be hurt if we wait to go on that ride? Will you please just put 4 on your nose, Savannah? Why haven’t Dawson and Brady had to go to the bathroom all day? Are they peeing in the pool?”)
A few snapshots from the day.
Savannah (13) is hungry. We’ve been on several rides that the boys wanted to go on, with me promising her after every one that we’ll get food after “this next one.” She is exceptionally patient. Feeling defeated, I finally tell her to go get the food without us because the boys keep telling me that they’re not hungry (with me of course knowing they are because they haven’t eaten all day and are just too wound up to get the food) but she doesn’t want to go alone and carry all the food. So I come up with the brilliant idea to tell Brady (8) to watch Dawson (4) in the kiddy park—not to let him out of his site (Dawson has ‘selective hearing’ at the early age of 4 and usually does what he wants no matter what anyone tells him…no, really, it’s fun). And I tell Dawson NOT to leave Brady’s sight. Right, Aunt Hilary. Good one. That’ll work. They are to float around in the Lazy River one time (it’s a large Lazy River) and then I’ll find them at the stairs near the kiddy pool. Minutes later, Savannah and I are standing in line for food and I am extremely antsy about the boys. She’s a bit annoyed because I’m a bit paranoid, but hell, I’m just the aunt. I can’t imagine calling my brother and saying, “Well, two of them are good. Lost one, but two outta three ain’t bad.” So I tell her I’ll be RIGHT back—that I’m just going to check on them in the Lazy River, knowing that they’ll be “fine.”
I walk over to the kiddy pool section where the Lazy River is and watch the people floating by slowly…no boys…I walk around the circle a bit to see if they’re in another section of the Lazy River…no boys….my heart skips only once as I glance across the kiddy pool (keeping my cool because I know they can’t be too far gone in the kiddy section) and my eyes fall upon the little four-year-old walking along the Lazy River on the cement. By himself. No, he’s not IN the water, not IN the Lazy River floating like he’s supposed to be. He’s walking along the inside of the ropes where only lifeguards are supposed to walk. Throwing sticks in the water as people float by him. At the people as they float by him. Entertaining, right? I casually walk over to him and ask, “Hey there, Dawson. Where’s your brother?” He replies, “I don’t know. I’m going to the slide now.” And runs off.
Shift forward a few hours: one wants Dippin’ Dots, the other a blue icy, and the other an ice cream cone. All three, of course, at different locations. Why would a business for mostly kids do this to an adult? Why not sell all three in the same freaking hut? Being the single in loco parentis that I am, we all wait in line together and I convince two of them to want the same thing so we don’t have as many huts to visit. We purchase our edibles move to a table to chow down and take a break from all the fun in the sun, and the four-year-old begins performing stunts while eating his cone. I saw it happening; I knew it would be the way I foresaw it in my head, and it came to be just that. The cone hit the sand and the little one cried as if I had just taken him from his mommy. Ice cream’s over, kids. Back to the kiddy pool.
It’s now 3:45 and we’ve pledged that we’ll make it to the closing of the park at 5:00 (we arrived near the opening around 11:00, mind you). I have whole-heartedly changed that pledge now with the promise that we’ll all go get henna tattoos at Alvin’s Magical Island if we leave NOW! (Another stellar idea by the absurd, inexperienced aunt. Take three children to get henna tattoos where all have to wait patiently for the other in a huge store full of pirate swords, plastic snakes, rubber bouncy balls, and let’s see…what else got broken…). So I ask the 8 year old to PROMISE he’ll keep an eye on the 4 year old for just five minutes while the 13 year old and I get our stuff together. He promises his best promise and puts on his most efficient parental tone with the 4 year old. Three and a half minutes later, I hear a young boy screaming at the top of his lungs as if someone has just been shot in front of him, and I look over to see the 8 year old pulling the 4 year old out of the Lazy River (Oh yeah, I’ve told the 4 year old he’s not to get in the Lazy River because we’re leaving and he’s assured me he wouldn’t think of it. “I’ll stay RIGHT HERE, Aunt Hirry, with Brady, right? We won’t leave this slide, right?”).
I calmly walk toward the two boys as two lifeguards are simultaneously sprinting over to them, I’m sure, thinking the little one is drowning, and I guarantee them that no, he’s not drowning, he’s just not getting his way because that’s how we roll, baby! The fifteen-year-old and seventeen-year-old lifeguards don’t think I’m as funny as I think I am and they stalk off to talk about me and my poor parenting skills with their cronies, who are twirling their professional lifeguard whistles at the lifeguard stand, reapplying their sunscreen before yet another round of crazy life guarding skills at the kiddy pee-pools. One second later, I see out of my peripherals an obvious and professional mom gawking at me both worried and annoyed, while her angelic four-year-old sits quietly next to her eating a hotdog. I happily respond to her silent and violent stare burning a hole in my forehead, “I’m obviously just the aunt. Hahaha…Your son must be really tired to be that good at a place like this.” Because I don’t think the, “You know, I’m working on my PhD and although I might not be the best single parent, I bet I’m smarter than you.” retort wouldn’t suffice. She too, does not join in on my attempted child-humor of the day.
I wonder if I could artistically scrawl some waves, a speed slide, and a pair of four-year-old lungs screaming, along with enormous tears welling up in little 8 and 4 year old eyes on a local wall…you know, to represent the unforgettable family time I had with the little ones that day…
Maybe I’ll just keep reading about how experiences help shape who we are. And I’ll keep appreciating the graffiti I see on the buildings in Atlanta representing the stories of children who come in and out of our lives for brief moments over time. And I’ll continue to be grateful for the art of parenting that so many of you possess, and do extremely well, I might add. Keep up the good work. As will I. And screw ‘em if they can’t take a joke! HEH
No comments:
Post a Comment