Tonight Toby poked his head through the patio door and asked “What do beavers make?”
“Dams?” I said. When he laughed I realized he was baiting me to say a forbidden word and I mouthed for him to “Cut that out around his brother.”
A minute later Charlie’s brown buzz-head popped through the door and asked “What do beavers make?” Toby hovered invisibly next to the sand table, having obviously put his brother up to the ruse.
This is the most inspiring book I have ever read for kids. Not only does “The Boy Who Changed the World” encourage a child to find his gifts and use them, but it talks about simple serving concepts like feeding the hungry and helping others. There is also a gorgeous illustration of a barn burning down which captivated my savage little darlings. There are quite a few words on each page, but both of my sons, ages four and six, were engaged to the end.
The central theme of the story is how one person can change the world. There are several stories about different little boys, but each story intertwines into the singular outcome of feeding billions of people. The story was so rich and meaningful that I found myself tearing up as I read the last few pages.
I highly recommend this book for parents seeking to teach a broader worldview and hearten the unique skills and abilities in their children.
I sent my oldest son, Toby, to Kindergarten this morning. The drive to the school took five minutes. Five short minutes to surrender my child to the large and wicked world.
I started crying before we even made it through the double doors. It might have been the functionality of his school: the student monitors stationed around the circle drive, the teachers on walkie-talkies organizing drop-off, the parents swinging briskly through the car line as if the world weren’t ending. How did everyone else know what they were doing? Greg and I trudged up the front walk, our tiny baby son between us, very unready to let him go.
Toby was brilliant. None of the order and rush of the school bothered him. He said, “I’m so excited!” It felt strange. Three months ago he still cried when I dropped him at preschool. Today he was confident– a small, sweet, sparkly-eyed boy with his stuffed Dalmatian Samson peeking out of his backpack. He held my hand and for the first time, I knew he was doing it for my sake and not his own.
Some days I’m clawing for worth. I mope around, looking under the couch for Charlie’s stuffed Bee while he whines behind me. Suddenly, I’m pining for the self I wanted to be when I was seven. The seven-year-old me wanted to be known, to have some measure of my value etched upon the world like a trophy. Then I could point at that trophy for relief when my field of confidence blows with tumbleweeds.
Look at my book I wrote! See my byline?! I am actually smart—it says so right there!
It’s an indulgent fantasy since most of my life is better than I imagined—Greg and my boys for example. There aren’t daydreams enough to equal the love I feel for them. And yet.
This article originally published in the Feb.-Mar. 2010 issue of Deeper. For more articles on faith and family or to subscribe via e-mail to the Mom’s Moments and Deeper Newsletters, go here.
My son, Toby, turned five on January 12th. Our family laughed over pizza at his favorite restaurant just as the whole of Port Au Prince crumbled to the ground. We didn’t learn the news until the next day when the pictures spilled from our T.V. along with a painful realization. During the chaos and death, we were celebrating life. The irony felt like a stone in my heart.
I wanted to share this beautiful comment from writer Anna Sklar, on the earlier post “Wingman.”
She wrote:
Recently I came to a place where God asked me if He was enough. If all I ever had was Him, would I be happy with my life. As I was humbled and answered Him “yes,” everything else appeared as such a blessing. My husband, my boys, my family, my friends, my house, my neighbours, my writing.
My favorite part of this new blog design is the tag line: “Find a destination, run fast.” The only problem is me not having a destination.
I spend a lot of time writing about my boys. This blog may become the longest book ever written, and if the climax is Toby and Charlie’s passage into adulthood I’m gonna go ahead and delete myself from your Google reader to spare you the ennui. Being a mom is the purest part of me, the easiest cause to wholly pledge myself, but I want to give more to my kids than devotion. I want my boys to see meaning beyond themselves. I will have to show them in my own life.
Insomania is when another person’s sleeplessness makes you want to gouge out your own eyes. It is the second-hand-smoke of insomnia. For over a month Charlie has taken long, happy drags of his own wakefulness. He sits in his bed talking to himself or singing the ABC’s (minus H-P), and showing off with arbitrary bursts of crying. I am stuck with the unfiltered by-products: staring wildly at the baby monitor or trying to sleep while a two-year-old runs loose in his bedroom.
And he is so grouchy. His preschool teacher mentioned this in the most sensitive manner. “Is Charlie, okay? He seems a little… out of it,” she said very helpfully, very “it’s probably an ear infection and out of your control” -ishly. I appreciated her grace, but really, what can you say when your son’s crankiness is noteworthy among other two-year-olds?
I made an appointment with Charlie’s doctor, hoping he wouldn’t prescribe The Strong-Willed Child and a spanking spoon (Oh parenting shame). Instead, we took home a clean bill of health and a bottle of my new BFF, melatonin.
Having a nice car is right after Polka on a list of things I care about. It drives Greg crazy because he loves all things cars and shops AutoTrader faithfully. He will email me an AutoTrader photo with “What Do You Think?” in the subject line, just for conversation’s sake. What I think is that I don’t care. I want two things in a car: leather and a big trunk. Leather, not for luxuriousness, but because my boys are disgusting on upholstery. The End.
My car has 105,000 miles, and a variety of damage. One person backed into me at Target and dented my front fender. Toby opened his door against the cart return rack at Wal-Mart three different times. My side panel has a two foot scrape from either a) pulling in too close to the lawn mower or b) Toby’s bike handlebars. I don’t dwell on these imperfections. My car is always covered with dirt film anyway, so I doubt a few dings make any aesthetic impact.
Two months ago my CD player quit working. At first I was ticked, but then I remembered the hours of Kidz Bop, and suddenly it’s death seemed an act of mercy. We never listen to regular radio because there are only so many safe ways to explain “booty” to a four-year-old. We have survived on our local Christian station even though they’re a little Barry Mannilow-ish in format. (They specialize in Michael W. Smith’s early work and also every version of “Shout to the Lord.” I’m not judging. I’m just giving facts.)
A friend sent me a blog post by a dad whose young son just died of a rare medical condition. I read the whole thing, because it was a beautiful muse for those of us seduced by grief. Grief is my gateway drug, beckoning with a dismal finger until the sadness builds into raging anxiety. “I can’t imagine…” I wrote back to my friend, but it was a lie because I can totally imagine. I imagine all the time– when the boys lose a ball in the street, when they go swimming, if they stay asleep for too long—I can’t resist the snowball of doom that claws its way from my mind.
Like when Toby and Charlie stand in the church parking lot watching a train go by. The wheels shriek wildly down the rails carrying a bazillion tons of metal. “Be careful!” I say as if the train might suddenly derail, mysteriously roll across the highway, strangely bounce upon their fragile, tiny selves. You are overreacting, I think, but I pull them back a little anyway.
Before nap, when I sat beside Charlie on the bed, he rubbed at his legs as if some invisible agent were eating at his bones. “Boo boo,” he said whiningly and I kissed his shins, mentally sprinting past growing pains or itchy pants and aiming straight for cancer. Later when Toby scratched his legs too, I realized it was just bug bites from the yard. Of course…
