MISSING SOME THINGS

As I sit here, tickled to death watching Isaiah's complete re-enactment of winning his first touch down yesterday, I am also a little sad and feeling a touch guilty.  I missed it.  I missed the football game for a bloggers conference I attended this weekend (Blogalicious '09).  It was a fabulous conference.  I learned a lot about social media and now have a very long to-do list.  The wealth of conference swag and the parties (especially the one put on by the Blog Rollers) was awesome, haven't danced like that in a while. And India Arie made a very quick cameo appearance at the party--SO COOL.  And I met Denene Miller and Nelson George--two writers whose work I deeply admire.  Wait...what was I saying? Oh yeah....my wonderful, amazing son ran his very first touch down and his mommy wasn't there.  I know that there will be many other firsts but I really hated that I missed this one. 

I am a working mother.  I have to work. I am single so of course mine is the only income coming into this house.  (So unless you want to share with me next week's Mega Millions numbers--don't judge me okay?)  I was working when he took his very first steps (again gleefully re-enacted when I picked him up from day care.)  I cried of course, cause I'm a sappy mom who tears up over things like that.  I know it seems strange, but in a way, being a working mother makes me more conscience of the time I spend with him and making it count.  I can't always volunteer for all the school trips or serve on the PTA board but I can and do make his Halloween costumes, his birthday cakes, and am there for many, many other firsts.  Now I have to go.  Isaiah's having a fake wrestling match with some pillows and I have to play the "announcer". 

Old School Kids

I lament often about how much better life seemed when I was a kid. Life was simpler, play was safer and more imaginative. When I was a kid playing (way back in the 1980s) we learned how to fill in the blanks where technology had left off. It made us smarter and more creative. But by the 1990s much of that was out the window. Everything was more sophisticated—from video games to dollhouses. My little cousin’s dollhouse was so fancy it came with a remote control that operated the lights and a doorbell. We had to make all that kind of stuff up.

So now when I tell my son these tales of yesteryear when I was his age in 1981, how we had to get up and change the channel on the cable box and no one had the Internet, he stares in disbelief unable to imagine such hardships. We may tend to think of our children’s generation as a bunch of lazy, spoiled kids who don’t know how good they have it. And while to some degree that might be true, there are still lots of kids out there who want to play outside until the street lights come on and use their imaginations.

Case in point is the Speed Racer 1000. That’s the name of my son Isaiah’s box car. And by box I mean an actual box. He came up with the idea a couple of weeks ago. I don’t know what got into him other than maybe spending a week with me at Georgia Tech this summer must have inspired him. So he came up to me one day and said,

“Mama, I want to build a car.”

“Okay,” I replied and went back to watching T.V. as I was sure that he meant a tiny toy car.

He comes back requesting a cardboard box and tape. Then he comes back a little while later wanting to know if I have any wheels. That’s when I realize he wanted to build a—CAR, one that he can actually ride in. I explained to him that those were called go carts. So we went online, just out of curiosity, to see what it takes to make one. Now let me just stop right here and say that my mechanical skills extend to just shortly beyond hammering a nail and bookcase assembly. So needless to say that we quickly discovered go cart construction was too sophisticated.

Then I had an idea. I had just purchased a bookcase from IKEA whose packaging was perfect. I reinforced the rectangular box with tape and Isaiah cut a big hole in the top to sit down in. He then taped the bottom of the box to his skateboard and viola…we have a box car.

Now let me just say that I had absolutely no faith that this would actually work, but off to the park we went. After we got there and got set up a small crowd of about five curious kids and a couple of parents had gathered. Isaiah, so proud, announced the take off of the aptly named Speed Racer 1000. I could only laugh. But he positioned himself at the top of a slight incline and as one of the dad’s gave him a good push, off he went down and around. I’ll be dog gone it worked!

After that, several of the kids wanted to try it and so they took turns riding in the box car. I couldn’t help but appreciate that even with all of the technology available that there were still some kids who do still appreciate the simple pleasure of pretend play. Thanks to the Speed Racer 1000 (which after all the rides has finally fallen apart and had to be retired to the dumpster). Ahh, but it was fun while it lasted.

The Disconnects (Part 1)

When Isaiah was about three, I learned that there were many things that as a boy I would just NOT get about him. For instance I had to learn how to play with him. I had just gotten him a new wooden train set for Christmas and I was helping him set it up. It took forever, but we did it. I set up the little village and the complicated bridge. I sat back and admired my work, truly satisfied. That's when he took his plastic airplane and crashed it right into the bridge, leaving half the set sprawled across the floor. I was flabbergasted. Why did he just destroy the nice, perfectly set up trainset. Boys, I thought, always gotta be tearing something up.

It was about a week later that I got my answer. From the radio of all places, a local personality (Frank Ski-V103) was talking about how boys play and mentioned that the purpose of doing things like crashing the trainset or building blocks is to set it back up again. I could only laugh. As a girl of course I wanted everything to be nice and neat and pretty. As a boy he just wanted to break it all down so he could build it up again. That's just one of many examples of the gender disconnects Isaiah and I have had over the years. As I struggle to understand him (through our time together or from the insight of the other men in his life), I wonder if in doing so I understand myself better and vice versa. Much of what I've learned about little boys having come from my son, then much of what he learns about women comes from me. Which makes me wonder, how much of how men learn to connect with women emotionally comes from their relationships with their mothers?