On Kindergarten Eve

As I write this post, I am contemplating the browser tab for the Google search, "inspecting for lice" and wondering whether I should bookmark it or just leave it open.  I had to do a search last night after a flurry of text messages and a phone call from friends we camped with over the weekend, and it made for a little baptism for mother and father heading into the heart of September.  The flashlight inspection last night, the lack of even a single scratch of the scalp and a good hair wash tonight provide some reassurance that we are all clear.

We hope.

The lad heads on the next stage of the journey tomorrow. Kindergarten is a little more than 13 hours away and I pause to look in all directions.  He will be headed to an old sandstone building still older than the one I started school in in days of yore.  It is not the red clapboard single room school of one stereotype but the creak of the wood floors, the wide-yet-cluttered hallways and tall windows give a sense that this is a school that gives some comforting associations with the word.  With the school being only 400 metres away, there is the chance to see him build some independence in the weeks and months ahead as well.

Today, it was a challenge to give the sense of significance that was appropriate for the occasion of starting school. An afternoon at a trampoline centre, an early bath and a bit of a speech from the old guy (that's me!) was part of the effort to make something of the day, but it is more of a transition for mom and dad than it is for him. New friends, new expectations and perhaps the threat of a little less play than has been the case, but it may be hard for him to identify significant differences between elementary school and day care. There will be lots of new kids and a lot of bigger ones too, but other than that there will be little to overwhelm the boy who so calmly transitioned into day care 30 pounds and 18 inches ago.

There are some questions about how we prepared him, but I try to tell myself that would be the case with any parent. He has an undeniable knack for math and sciences, a mild indifference to art, drawing, and... ahem... printing.  I look ahead to the partnership with his teachers in the years ahead to help us set goals for him and I anticipate the challenges we will all face with some degree of excitement.  I can picture him sitting down at the kitchen table - not necessarily tomorrow night - working on the things that he is struggling with where I can bring something to his growth, but I will dread -- just as I did during junior high school -- the Science Fairs that loom.

Apart from the scholastic aptitudes that are yet to be measured more precisely, there is the boy that we are sending off into the world.  He is an affectionate boy who can be a goofball and enjoys the role of the clown.  There are moments when he can withdraw when he is not getting his way, but there is a chance that he is more sensitive to the needs of others when he is in a big room. From day one we have been conscious of his size.  I recall seeing other newborns when he was just two or three weeks old and gaping at my wife with the question, "Was he ever that small?" We are more than a little anxious about how the expectations and perceptions of him are altered because of his size and while we may have done him an advantage academically by waiting an extra year before sending him on to kindergarten, there may be greater expectations of him as he towers over the other kids in his class.

Ultimately though, he is a prodigious hugger and (if they allow that in school) I think he is the kind of kid that can help bring together a room of kids.  We that thought and the insistence that we want, above all, for him to be a good, kind sensitive boy and man, we send him into the world.

(Almost) Inner-City Parenting

Unlike the pattern described recently in a Vox article in parenting in the inner-city, my wife and I moved from the 'burbs to the inner-city before becoming parents.  There might be quibbling about the definition of inner-city in the part of Calgary where we have lived for the last nine years.  Calgary has its onion layers of growth and development and we moved 16km closer to downtown, from the layer that afforded the view of the northwestern city limits to a neighbourhood where the original houses are over 100 years old.

At the time of the move, we actually increased the square footage we occupied, moving from a newish 1000-square-foot townhouse to a 1400 square-foot apartment-style condominium. Parenthood was not on the horizon when we moved, but we immediately came to appreciate the walkability of the neighbourhood.  As I said, it was not significant at the time, but rather than facing the prospects of bussing our son past an empty lot declaring itself (as it has for nine years) the future site of a school, we are now within 1.2 kilometres of three elementary schools. Our son's is just 500 metres away. Beyond that there are three playgrounds, two pools and the daycare that he has attended for the last 2 1/2 years. The level of car traffic being makes me reluctant to let him head out on his bicycle on his own but with time, he will be able to navigate his way onto the bike paths safely.  Ultimately, though, we are in a location where he will have relative independence to move about on his own without being reliant on his mother and I to get to school by car.

When Gabriel came along, there was no impulse to pull up stakes and head to the burbs for the extra space and a patch of grass that we could declare exclusively ours.  The infrastructure in our neighbourhood is abundant.  If there was an issue with the space in the condominium, we would adapt to it and we would cross our fingers that this would be what he grew up knowing.  We have ready access not only to the schools, daycare, parks and pools, but the transit system within a 7-minute walk.  Transit easily gets us to music class, downtown, museums, the zoo, movie theatres and other facilities that are all keys parts of free time that I spend with my son (without relying on the car.)

There are other parts of Calgary, namely the still-developing East Village, that have the potential to give families the opportunity to stay right in the downtown area.  Schools are currently a little harder to come by in the East Village, but the amenities there are quite attractive. With museums, the library and playgrounds all nearby, the main issues are proximity to schools and whether or not developers are willing to provide the space families need or if they favour the profitability of smaller units.

In our case, the space we have is more than enough.  If we happened to have ended up having two children, we may have had some tougher decisions to make, especially if we ended up with a boy and a girl, but at this point, the 1400 square feet we have is more than enough. The blog 5 Kids 1 Condo makes the case that a bit of hacking (both in terms of trimming away the unessential and finding a few deft short cuts) would further maximize the way we use our space.  Our mindset throughout, however, has been to use the amenities around us as much as possible rather than insulating ourselves in a detached home and investing a lot of time and energy in duplicating what is readily at hand.

The lessons that we have learned and the habits we have developed are all different from what would be the case in the 'burbs.  Our son has probably socialized more on the nearby playgrounds and his time walking or travelling by transit has exposed him to a wider variety of people from walks of life he would not encounter if he was chauffeured about the city from a distant locus of similar houses with a vista of matching garage doors extending down a street.

Owning Up

Our Saturday morning rituals truncated for the summer, we have foregone the music lessons until the fall, but we still squeeze in our lunch pizzas with my cronies and yesterday, one of the less regular attendees in the circle asked Gabriel if he had a piggy bank and after a confirming nod, handed over a toonie.

Prior to that, my inquiry about whether Gabriel was ready to get on the train was met with some excitement, even if it did not entail a stop for a snack at Starbucks. The view of the city from the train still holds its command over Gabriel, and of course, there is a bit of local colour or grit on the train that he does not encounter from a backseat of the car.

When we arrived on the platform and he punched our ticket for the ride, Gabriel gravitated toward a boy who was a year older but happened to be playing with an Optimus Prime Transformer toy and wearing a baseball cap, just like Gabriel - check, check.  The two of them fell into easy conversation and when that happens as spontaneously as it does, about ten minutes passed before they got around to exchanging names.  When we boarded the train, they sat together.  The boy's father had little in common with me other than the boys and the proximity of their ages.  He was dressed in colours that seemed dark and muted by neglect or disregard. He had a large tattoo that covered most of his left bicep and for the moment preoccupied himself with his cellphone, something I am not above but wasn't doing this time around as Gabriel was inviting me to explain my affection for the long-gone Montreal Expos as we walked to the station.

As the train headed downtown, Gabriel and the boy continued their conversation and as it unfolded, the boy felt the need to raise the point that the police had taken his Dad's car for no apparent reason. The father in measured, resigned tones indicated that the car was taken because he had a suspended license. There was not a moment of disrespect for authority or the suggestion that he was hard-done-by or deserved or needed a break or express anything to indicate that anyone else was to blame.  My respect for the man was moved to the level he deserved and for the moment I discarded the narrative I was writing about a weekend father putting the time in.  He was setting a great example for his son and for myself.  It is easy to forget the importance of setting an example, especially when it comes to responsibility.

So the next time there is an opportunity to avoid taking myself down a notch in my son's estimation of me, I will remind myself of this man and father who acknowledged reality rather than trying to revise it to suit me in the short term.

The Curse of Imitation

It happened.  It may have actually happened in countless other ways that I have been able to discount with varying degrees of denial.  My sighs of exasperation are not quite that dramatic; he probably picked it up at daycare from a kid who picked it up from his or her folks.  The eye roll? Okay, that might have been me, but I usually turn away and lift my head to the heavens.  Still safe.  The running? Yeah, that's me.  The resistance to sleep? Nature, not nurture, so I shrug off that genetic hand-off with some resignation.

But this one, I could not deny. The Dude was playing with friends at his grandparents' neighbours two Sundays back.  I was there as well, providing some vigilance to relieve the neighbour the burden of tending to my son in addition to her own two sons. We were chatting about kids, summer travel plans and such when Gabriel let out an impatient yell that immediately clanged on my conscience.  That was me, clearly something he picked up from me and my go-to move when patience has worn thin or frankly I'm too lazy for a mindful, calmer approach.  I immediately (and calmly and gently, I can add) called him over.  I was not preoccupied with appearances and what this younger mother might think. 

Gabriel sat on my knee thoughtfully and was prepared to listen.  There was something about his surrender or openness at that moment that reminded me of a heart-to-heart we had a few weeks before. We sat on the sofa and in the course of the conversation I assured him that I would always be looking out for him and that making sure he was happy and safe.  In response he replied, "I never knew that," and there was a sense that it was a genre of father-son conversation that we would be able to have regularly and that there was an honest give and take.

This time around though, I spoke straight up about how he was picking up a bad habit from me - the yell.  I told him that it was something I learned and that I was trying to unlearn it and that I needed him to unlearn it before it became a habit.  I have been conscious of my tendency for a long time and when I catch myself, I can manage to alter my tone or volume after a tumultuous start to make a change that only a sensitive ear like that of a novelist or a child can pick up on.  On this occasion, though, with him on my knee and quiet with a sense of the moment, but it his guilt or mine.  Perhaps in his case, there was the realization that the yelling thing did not render any benefits.  For that moment, I had the feeling that I was getting through to him and making a pact that the two of us could hold each other to.  

I did not give him much opportunity to speak on this occasion and I did not ask him to apologize to his friends.  If anything I should have apologized to them, but there was enough self-flagellation for the moment without puzzling two pre-schoolers with this bout of self-awareness.

For the past ten days I've managed to rein in the volume and find that extra bit of patience when I'm being tested.  There was even a little revelation from Alice Munro's The View From Castle Rock where she talked about a relationship between parent and son that underlined the fact that being overprotective of your child (guilty as charged) ultimately prompts the kid to test your limits rather than his own and come to some discovery of self-regulation as limits are tested independently.  (If that revelation has reached all of her readers, she deserves another Nobel to go with her one for Literature.)

So, I've dialled back the over-protective, over-corrective impulses. When he scampered off recklessly from a crosswalk (and me) on Monday and landed in a heap after tripping on his feet, I just hoisted him up and comforted him until the tears ended. I held on and let the storm pass and we were both assured that he would live. Tonight, with his feet brown with dirt from an afternoon on the playground and him in no mood for a bath or shower (on consecutive days?!?!) I found the compromise of a ticklish footwash in the sink as he sat on the vanity counter. The novelty amused him and got the job done without undue battle over territory.

The yell, hopefully, will see its decline and disappearance. I'll be the tough nut to crack since it is a go-to in times of stress. It may not be the most reasonable expectation, it is a goal - especially when the dialogue has been already so valuable and illuminating with Gabriel when he's barely 5 1/2.

Onward.

Early Rites of Passage

Yesterday afternoon, my wife and I sat in a room with about 30 other parents to dab discreetly at our eyes and take pictures of Gabriel as he took his turn to cross a stage and receive a certificate. By my estimate there will be at least three more occasions of this, including the reading of The Places You Will Go - as we get through the K-12 years at far too brisk a pace.  In the future, it will be his full name - perhaps with both middles thrown in to reflect the formality and significance of the occasion - and the tears will flow a little longer.  He has graduated from daycare.  Today, however, he was back in day care and he'll continue going through much of the summer until that point in August where the goodbye will be less formal and more intimate (and teary) than they were yesterday.

Earlier this week Gabriel also learned that that he, perhaps by no more than the thickness of a sock, has outgrown the height restriction of a shopping centre playground. There may be an attempt to sneak him in, but I won't be attempting that one. He may be more interested in the access he will gain on certain rides at the local amusement park to ease his anguish about his growth.

I am torn over the formality of the graduation yesterday. It was an opportunity to mark his imminent departure from daycare even though it is still about 2 1/2 months away and I am glad that the educators at the daycare had the opportunity to say goodbye in the manner that they did yesterday. It is probably all too easy to rush through this particular goodbye to the women who have had such a significant impact on Gabriel.  I still foresee an informal good bye that will be quite heartfelt.

My issue is that there may be too many ceremonies and celebrations of this sort and that each rite of passage will get over formalized.  A more mindful and conscious acknowledgement of those passages will be valued as well and I suspect there may be a risk of either celebrating small accomplishments on scale that risks blowing them out of proportion or bringing a formality to the occasion that does not seem appropriate.  Yesterday's ceremony was sweet.  The kids all sang a song about growing up and being ready for "big kids' school" so there was a sense of culmination about the event.

The more mindful recognition of those rites would be more appealing to me. There are countless other little achievements that a child goes through as they mark their growth and advancing independence and I would prefer that people be conscious enough of those steps to mark them in their own personal way that aligns with their values and interests. We will have plenty of those little moments and it may just be that the improvised moments that mark those rites will be more valuable and memorable than the formal occasions.

In my own case, waaaaay back in March 1975 I had my first communion on my own.  My father, was heading off to sea with the Navy just before I was supposed to have my communion with my catechism class.  Instead of marking it on a sun-kissed Sunday morning, I believe it was on a Thursday night during Holy Week.  I don't recall if the priest made any special announcement to the congregation that night, but I do recall a woman who qualified as elderly to a certain 8-year-old (me!) giving me either a dime or a quarter after mass to congratulate me for it.  I had the sense that she had always seen me in church and that the coin came as an unprompted acknowledgement of my communion rather than something prompted by words from the pulpit.  After mass, my parents took me to a department store to get my first watch.

With Gabriel, I value those similarly informal moments and acknowledgements of his growth: the way the baristas light up when he leads me into Starbucks on Saturday mornings to make our order is one example, though it may not necessarily be a rite. This week though, at the mall as he left the playground for the last time - unless he tries to sneak in on a quiet day - the attendant gave him an ink stamp on the wrist and said, "You may be too big for the playground, but you're never too big for stamps.  Okay?"

Childhood and The Zone

Two weeks ago, my son had his first serious opportunity to play the guitar.  After years of standing in front of me and beating on my strings, he has had his turn to embrace an instrument of his own and find his way through the deep roads of the fretboard, the strings, bridge and pick.  There is much ahead in his journey to even determine if he wants to play the guitar but for now he has one of his own to lean over or hug as it rests on his right thigh.

Chords remain a work in progress.  The fingers and the spatial arrangement have not visited each other frequently enough for him to feel adept at putting together a chord and his hands still have a bit of growing to do before we get into a discussion of bar chords or the challenge of reaching the furthest strings.  For the time being he has beaten on his guitar along with everyone else, a contribution of vibe or passion to the more structured strumming and chord progressions the rest of us follow.  While we were proceeding through Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" his head was tilted back, his eyes were closed and his pick-hand was well over his head - a tribute to Pete Townshend before he even discovered the man's technique of idiosyncrasies.  He seemed to be in complete rapture and lost in the moment.  As I beamed at him, his eyes opened and he dissolved into a state of self-consciousness.

"What?", he asked, his rapture dissolved and chased by a newly discovered timidity.

I assured him that all was well and did my best to assure him that -- as far as I was concerned -- that moment of lost bliss was just what the guitar was about.  Since that moment, however, I have wondered about what it would take to introduce him to the concept of the zone or peak performance. I recall my own efforts to get into the zone when I was learning to ride the bicycle. My first was a gleaming green with a long banana seat and high handlebars like you'd associate with a chopper. There were no training wheels in the effort.  This was strictly old school and the effort to find my balance was a lengthy one.  History would probably say that the learning was briefer than I recall but I rode up and down a stretch of yard that ran next to the house, wobbling along until I completely fell over until, bang, I had it.  For some reason I fell upon the word "Cordoba" (after the Chrysler) and ran that word through my head repeatedly until gravity pulled me off the bike and dislodged my mantra.  I would resume again and again, the word stuck in my head until I was balanced and able to bring myself to a controlled stop rather than a fall.  I do not recall if I did a full lap of the yard or if I just felt that I, after going all of 10 metres without falling over, just assumed I had the bike thing all sorted out.  It was, however, a stretch where I was in the zone as I tried to master the bike.

The guitar was much later for me and while self-taught, there was a bit more self-critique and a lot more inner dialogue than I would have had if I started as early as my son.  At this point, he is not too concerned about precision or proficiency - he just wants to bang on the guitar and enjoy the social aspects of sitting amongst "the men" to indulge in the time they share.

I want to find a way to make him familiar with that peak experience.  Regular experience of it will provide him with the compass to his passions and his purpose.  It will also clarify his definition of himself and the things he does well or may be meant to do.  It does not have to come from playing the guitar or music.  I just want him to be familiar with it and have the conversation with him about what it is, how he got there and what it might mean.  I suspect that it will wait, but in the meantime, I'll file moments like this one to tell him about these experiences and ask him to reflect on how he felt during those moments.

Coaching

For Calgarians, soccer season is an eight week interval between the last icy gasp of winter and the start of summer holidays. This year, rather than subjecting us to the discomforts of standing against a brisk wind making us wish we had another layer of down, a blast of snow seized the first week of my son's U6 season outright rather than leaving any questions about how cold it might get before it was determined that the kids were better off with their normal, sedentary evening routines.

For week two, we congregated at the local community centre where nets are aligned in pairs across the soccer field and went through the routine of scanning the team app that we signed up for to determine who else was on our children's team and who the coach was. My son knew that he was on the same team as one of his closest friends from daycare and further to that I knew that among his teammates was the five-year-old most likely to do a 10-metre knee slide across the field with his shirt pulled over his head and beckon the crowd's complete adoration. I'm not kidding - it is the kind of thing that sticks in your head. Last year, this kid was the only one wearing cleats, and he showed up every week in an authentic Real Madrid kit complete with Ronaldo's or somebody's name and number. 

I scanned the roster on my phone and found the name of a "non-player" and as the queries about who was coaching mounted, a lean sixties-ish guy with a silver beard acknowledged his name and added that he thought he had made it clear that he said he wasn't available this year. Fortunately enough, he decided to come out to watch his grandson play and he would pitch in.  He turned to me and asked, "You know anything about soccer?"

"I've kicked a ball." I didn't bother to add that the last time I kicked a ball, about ten days earlier, my efforts redefined the word "errant" and left me humbly chasing my shot up the road to throw the ball back over the fence it sailed over. I played organized soccer up until I was 15 and I had played pick-up off and on. As for coaching, I knew that I would have to take turn at some point but I thought I oiled wait another year or so. I was going to definitely miss one week and that was enough for me to rationalize putting it off another year. I was not sure if I could muster the extroversion to elicit the excitement among the kids to play or get the focus for drills that I would expect myself to aim for despite it still being the time of, "Same team, same team!" and "When's snack time?"

I was ready to coach and pitch, though feeling a bit of stage fright about trying to drill them on things for the half hour of practice that preceded a loosely officiated game. Twelve hours after the fact, it has just dawned on me that .I could start them off with some stretching and that vaguely remembered game with the numbers or something. I don't even like stretching.

Instead of taking the pressure role of leading the kids in their early paces, I seized the opportunity to lay out the cones that separated the field into units for each of the four teams. I grew hesitant with each step as I acknowledged that nobody else was laying out cones for any of the other teams. A voice in my head chided me for not jumping in and taking the lead even though the current volunteer as coach was not too reluctant to accept the task that was thrust upon him.

"You go in net with these guys. Okay?"

I immediately started to wonder about how competitive I was going to be and with each save I wondered if I was going to hear the hue and cry of parents who would complain the game wasn't fair and that I ought to let the kids-only opposition score enough to keep it fair. I was a hockey goalie growing up and those same instincts took over quite quickly. Still, I made a point of letting a goal in early to put the other team ahead before knuckling down and stopping shots aggressively. I thought I was getting a sense of how our team was doing, but they did not score as much as I had thought. There was one little pocket rocket, with plastic shin pads the glimmered with a metallic blue sheen, who had pretty good speed and a good sense of footwork with the ball and he got some decent breakaways on me and scored a few. On a separate occasion, I pulled Gabriel aside to point out a crestfallen opponent who was taken aback by a push Gabriel delivered. As the ball hit the twine behind me, the coach gently chided, "You! Penalty for parenting."

Snack time followed and I was off the hook and managed to escape the wrath of parents who thought I was playing too hard or too well. Instead, the little pocket rocket came up to me and said, "I score three goals on you." He was cute and I liked the way he played, so I gave him a fist bump instead of replying, "Two. You scored TWO, kid." With that, I was off the hook for this week, but I suspect it will be time to dust off a stretching exercise and a few games to get them enjoying some drills.