The Walk Home Evolves

From https://www.emuparadise.me/

Before getting into this post, a quick anecdote from a few days ago.

Our heat has been off in our condo as the boiler is being replaced. With the temperatures closer to freezing than we would like there is a little more bundling up.  A few nights back we asked our son if he wanted pyjamas with feet or without feet.

"Yes!", he replied.

We asked again and again -- I could inflate this to 7 repetitions of the question -- and each time he replied, "Yes."

Finally I said, "You know, if you can't answer an A or B question, we might have to hold you back a year."

His response, which I admit I clearly had coming: "You already did!!"

He's 5 now.  Going on 15 in November.

Despite the lad being in school now and rounding out his truncated days in kindergarten ("Oh, when I was a boy...") with sessions at Out of School Care (OOSC), I still have the opportunity to walk him home.

The changes may have been gradual but they are significant and noticeable at this point.  Our walks on the pedestrian overpass that straddles 14th Street are far more amusing now as he essentially turns it into his version of the old video game Frogger.  He pauses strategically before racing over each lane of traffic to avoid getting exploded.  I'm slower to catch on but he assured me on Monday that even though I got exploded I still had two lives left.  (Obviously he is getting exposed to video games somewhere.)  Today he added a variation to the game by telling me that the northbound cars were marshmallows and the southbound bombs. Or was that the southbound were marshmallows.  The strategy has changed and he is less likely to adopt the full on sprint across the overpass to smash himself into the chainlink fence on the other side of the bridge.  He has not, however, developed a clear scoring system.

The conversation has opened up a little more. He still tends to give accounts of the people who contributed to the scrapes and cuts on his knees. This month, however, the stories have been of real conflict over sharing or not sharing and I have taken the opportunity to share with him my simmering observation that one of the hardest things to decide is whether it is better to be patient and tolerate a situation or to impose your will on someone and make them concede to you.  At his age the second scenario may result in a fight, though there may be a chance that will or personality can assert some influence as well.  I told him my tendency has been to be patient, though I have wondered from time to time if that was the best strategy.  Despite my doubts, I told him that I preferred that he be patient and try to talk things through -- the third way that I have yet to get full command of.

A chance encounter with his uncle on our way home today also gave me the opportunity to talk about walking.  His uncle is involved in a conference on walkability here in Calgary this week and after we had a brief chat about the conference, my son and I continued home talking about how much we walk.  I did not bother to trouble him with kids who have to be bussed to school and just reminded him of entire weekends we have gone without using the car.  I pointed out the advantages for his health and safety when there are fewer cars or more time spent walking.  Today, though, I could have added that it is a good opportunity to clear your head at the end of the day.

Again, Again

Music will likely be one of the things that Gabriel and I will always bond over. I know I ought to chase that comic voice bubble out of the frame as I suspect there is a every likelihood the two of us will butt heads in the years ahead as our tastes diverge or his indifference to his guitar gains a critical mass, but when adolescence passes we should be able to pick up the conversation again from when or wherever we leave off. Unlike the Kinsellas in Field of Dreams, we will be more likely to sit down near the stereo or with our guitars than pick up baseball gloves.

Tonight was one of those nights where a song and a musician provided a span of the bridge that will take us through that still-distant stretch of adolescence to whatever conversation there will be when we sit down to share music on the other side.

After nearly a year of listening to an emerging pop-folk master named Paul Johnson, who commercially plies is craftsmanship under the guise of Canyon City, Gabriel was asking to hear, "The one that starts, 'I woke before the sun rose...'" during his bath and asked for it again as I turned him in for the night.  As we went on to listen to said song, titled "Needles and Pins," eleven to twelve times in a row until his breathing finally eased into the rhythm that portended sleep we talked and talked - the lad not merely stalling sleep, but asking questions that would not come from anywhere else.

"What is grace?" and, in response to my attempt to capture it for a 5-year-old, "What is a virtue?"

We lay in the dark exchanging favorite passages of the song. He, the chorus, with its fairy tale mention of plastic crowns and the certainty about where home is; me the more adult world evocations about "wear(ing) a tie to go to work and tell(ing)... lies like everything's okay" and "los(ing) some keys in the dust." With each repetition of the song in the dark, Gabriel's questions continued about the song, the individual words that emerged and caught his ear more easily with each listening and I'm sure there were unasked questions planted there to bloom later about music, craft, poetry and love that he will ask when he has the words in the weeks and years ahead.

I have every confidence that Mr. Johnson/Canyon City will have a wonderful career ahead of him as songs such as "Needles and Pins" continue to find their path to ears and hearts in the days ahead.  If it has not happened already, he will nightly have audience members who will tell him that he wrote their song, whether it is the one they make love to, danced for the first time as husband and wife or any other milestone in life of someone following their romantic path to one-and-onlys that he describes so aptly in song and song again.  In about ten years or so, there will also be a 60-year-old man with his 15-year-old son -- the lad possibly doing a great job of portraying adolescent indifference to anything the old man springs on him or indulging in some patience with me for the night -- and, with a wink, I'll simply say that I used his first album to lull that lad asleep not so long ago.

Thanks Paul.

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?"