In praise of 7 year olds

A few months back, before JR turned 7, I read a post on my friend Moxie's blog that had me quaking in my boots about the prospect of my son turning 7. Well the big day has come and gone and let me tell you, I love 7.

We spent the weekend at our first "travel" baseball tournament. Four games in two days. On Sunday the games were five hours apart, so we had a bit of time to kill. We spent that time with three of JR's teammates (and two of the dads). Immediately after the game, there was the trip to a local playground to let them continue their game of catch without smashing any of the car windows in the parking lot of the baseball field. Of course, their interest in playing catch faded quickly as soon as they realized there was playground equipment to climb and a surface made of ground up rubber that was ideal for throwing at each other. Our next stop was a diner for breakfast (did I mention that game one started at 8:00 and ended by 9:15 a.m.?) In between spilled water glasses and duels with knives, forks and spoons, we played Twenty Questions - which gave rise to the type of silliness that is endemic to 7 year olds. "Is it an animal or a thing?" "A thing" "Is it an elephant?" "No, an elephant isn't a thing." "It is if it's a soft gray toy elephant." And so it went.

The next stop was a local funplex where we parents had hoped to occupy the kids at the driving range and miniature golf. The boys had their own ideas. Their favorite activity was a spirited chasing, piling on, wrestling match that we parents loosely monitored for cleats in proximity to heads. Seven year old boys are all about physical contact. Lots of hugging, shoving, picking each other up, wrestling. There was also a fair amount of throwing stuff at each other - helped along by a room full of foam balls. Oh, and of course, there were the arcade games.

Lunchtime meant more silliness, more hugging and shoving and the chance to watch pack mentality in action. The boy who never drinks soda orders the cotton candy flavored Sprite that the other 3 boys want. The boy who hates all cheese gobbles up the lunch of mozzarella sticks and fries just like the lunch his buddies all ordered. They also schooled us in the fine art of translating burp-speech. I admit, I am far from proficient in that skill.

Being seven also means real baseball, with real uniforms, real pitching, real team spirit. The boys encourage each other. Lots of cheering. "We love pork chops, greasy, greasy. Hitting that ball will be easy-peasy." More chasing and piling on for the homerun hitter (well, okay, that was the other team, not ours). Pats on the back and hugs for the kid tagged out at 3rd base, now in tears. Being seven means being able to sit under a tree at the end of the game with the coach and actually dissect what new things about baseball they learned. "I learned not to be afraid when the ball is hit to me in the outfield." There is an intelligence and thirst for learning that is refreshing and inspiring to me.

Being seven means falling asleep in the car on the way home and lifting one's arms up to be carried inside, as if you were not over 50 lbs. of dead weight.

Oh, by the way, we lost all four games and every kid left the ballfield smiling.

Trying to Regain Perspective

I am a joiner. I am never happier than when invited to participate in a group activity. My hand is always one of the quickest to raise when volunteers are needed. Even this year, nigh on twelve months into a five-hour daily commute and full-time job, I am just now learning to pull my hand back down and remind myself that I don't have to be a helper at every school activity. I'm still teaching children's liturgy at church, I'm still baking and icing ridiculous quantities of cupcakes for my son's "almost birthday" at school, I'm still keeping score and generally corralling the wildness on the bench during my son's baseball games. But believe me, I've cut back.

I am a joiner. In that, I am truly my mother's daughter. My mother, of the five children each spaced barely one year apart, with her full-time job, who still managed to be a Cub Scout den leader, a Girl Scout leader, president of the high school band parents organization. It gives me great pleasure to see that part of her live on in me. I am my mother's daughter.

This leads me to today's meltdown. I had forgotten that my son does not necessarily channel me or my mother. He is his own person. We tend to create narratives around our kids and who we think they are. JR is "kind boy." (This, of course, goes back to that first meeting in the orphanage when the orphanage director described him as "kind" and we thought, "how can an 11-month-old be kind?" Since then, though, every time that JR has acted with generosity and kindness to another we think "Aha! Of course, he is 'kind boy.'") JR is "athletic" (I can trace this to the first parent-teacher conference at his nursery school when the teachers raved about how well he could throw a ball at the age of 18 months. So every time he throws a ball, we think "Look at our athletic boy!") JR is "shy" or "slow to warm up," a description given us by his pediatrician to address his penchant for hiding behind us and not engaging with new people.

So I've created this idea in my head about our little boy who loves to do anything athletic and transformed it into little boy who wants to participate in every team sport available in our city for children his age. So naturally, when we got the email invitation for try-outs for the under 8 travel soccer team sponsored by our neighborhood recreation center, I was all over it. First, I scouted out the other likely participants from our social network (part of the JR narrative is that he only wants to participate in activities where he has at least one friend; making the choreographing of summer camps quite a challenge). Sure enough, one of his best friends, H, according to his parents, was going to try out, as were three of his classmates and a host of other kids he knows from baseball and church. So this morning, I wake JR up. We feed him breakfast, get him dressed, get ready to head down the street for try-outs.

Then the meltdown started. "I don't want to try out for soccer." "I don't want to play soccer" Dumbfounded (how could MY son not want to join something?) I entered into the fray. We battled, each of us becoming more entrenched in our positions. JR was unable to articulate the "why" of his position. "See, if you don't know why, then you have to try," I responded. Then he'd articulate a "why" and I would shoot it down. I put those litigation skills to use. Poor JR's Dad tried to appease both sides. That wasn't happening.

I withdrew, thinking I'd play my trump card. I'd check in with best friend's mom and once he knew for sure H was trying out, JR would cave. Except that H is not trying out today for travel soccer. He (like JR) has a baseball game today. He told his parents he wants a break. His parents are inclined to agree. After all, the boys are only seven (well, in JR's case, almost seven). There will be other, less intense, soccer available in the fall. In the greater scheme of things, the other mom reminds me, does it really matter if they don't do travel soccer this year? Is it really going to affect their overall athletic ability? Their enjoyment of the game?

Dad has taken JR off to visit with his grandmother for an hour or so before the baseball game. I'm ostensibly straightening up the kitchen and doing laundry. Instead, I'm writing in order to sort out my thoughts. How do I teach myself to step back (and to let my son step back)? We don't have to say yes to every invitation. We don't have to volunteer for every activity. And if my son says "I don't want to" and he's talking about playing a game, as opposed to doing homework or eating his vegetables, maybe I just need to let it go.

Leaving the Office for Lunch

In this new job I tend to work through lunch, eating at my desk, or if I've spent the day in hearings, not eating at all. In part, this is because I no longer have the office lunch buddies that I had in my old job, and in part, it's because the learning curve here is steep and the workload daunting.
But today, having spent a productive morning and still in the glow of having my team win the first game of the World Series, I decided to take a walk at lunch. So I wandered to the other side of Chinatown and found a cozy French cafe where I had a delicious veggie omelet and mixed greens, and irresistible fries while I read my book. Walking back, at the intersection of Centre and Canal, I saw a gentleman blowing bubbles. He had one of those plastic machines that shoots a steady stream of bubbles. He wasn't promoting a store or anything. Just blowing bubbles. Making people smile. On the other side of the street, as I crossed, there was another man, more disheveled, standing in the city trash can. Just standing there. No one smiling. Happy. Sad. New York - the perfect microcosm.

I think I need to get out more.

Otter, We Hardly Knew Ya

We just returned from a lovely 5-day jaunt to Seattle (don't you love spouse's conferences?) where JR and I tried to see all the sights. On our first outing, to Pike Place Market, of course, we found a book called "Larry Gets Lost in Seattle", which became our guide. So we managed to see a Seattle Mariners game (they lost to the Angels, but the score was 2-1, so the game was quite respectable). We took a ferry to Bainbridge Island. We visited the main library, the Pacific Science Center, Chinatown, Pioneer Square, the neighborhood around University of Washington (my husband's idea), the Space Needle, the Children's Museum (made me miss our Please Touch Museum at home) and, one of the surprising highlights - the locks and salmon ladder at Ballard (Chittenden Locks). Earlier that day, JR and I had made a deal - he could buy one toy, at the end of the day, "if he was good" (which of course, he was). So there we were, at the end of the day, in the visitors center at the locks, which has a (thankfully) very small gift shop. And that was where we met Otter.

An interesting point about JR's choices of stuffed animals -- the ones he truly bonds with are small. As adults, I think we have this tendency to believe that bigger is better - so friends and relatives have gifted JR with a host full of giant Elmos and life size monkeys and standard issue teddy bears. Yet the animals he has named and played with and slept next to tend to be very small. Like Otter. He was about 3" long, a plush brown sea otter with a little tan face. JR named him Otter and they becamse fast friends. He introduced Otter to all the interesting facts of life - what cars are, and Daddies, and dinner and TV and a bed.

Yesterday morning, departure day, the last I saw of Otter, he was being placed in Daddy's pocket on our way down to breakfast at the hotel (they served Japanese breakfast, which JR's dad loves). He was going into Dad's pocket because JR's pocket was too small. After breakfast we had some time in the room where I finished packing and took care of some email while JR watched PBS Kids and hung out under the covers. Dad was probably reading the newspaper.

Then the mad dash to get out of the room, print out the boarding passes, retrieve the car and get to the airport. I was in charge of boarding passes, so I was not the last out of the room. Dad was in charge of a multitude of bags too heavy for anyone else to deal with.

Halfway to the airport, a plaintive JR asks "Where's Otter?" A brief discussion ensued and the parents determined that Otter must not have made it out of the hotel room. The day went on.

Rental car was returned, bags were checked, snacks were purchased, lunch was eaten and we boarded the plane home. JR slept for most of the flight, a miracle in and of itself. I had time to read my novel. We arrived home, ate PB&J sandwiches and got ready for bed.

Which is the precise moment that the loss of Otter hit JR like a ton of bricks. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth. The call to the hotel (no, Otter was not found). More wailing. Thinking I had calmed him down, I went up to bed. The wailing began again. Dad tried. I tried. Finally, an exhausted, devastated JR fell asleep in our bed - and I went down and slept in his bed because if there is one thing we have learned about our 6 y.o. - he may still need his stuffed animals and he may still cry his little heart out with disappointment, but he is too big and too restless to allow anyone else to get any sleep should they happen to be in the same bed.

North, south, east, west - home is best. Sorry, Otter, that your sojourn with our family was so brief.

Baseball History

Okay, it was a mid=season game against a team that has pretty much sewn up the worst in the league standings, but the weather was beautiful, the food at our fabulous new ballpark was as delicious as ever, it was Chase Utley bobblehead night, and we were sitting out there in right field watching Brett Myers pitch a 9-inning shut out and, while Rollins and Howard and even Utley continued to struggle, Greg Dobbs (Greg who?) hit a 2-run home run.

And so of course I've been thinking about baseball and how we're passing the love of this sport down to JR (or is he bringing us to it?) Because, truly, I came to baseball late in life. My dad was a basketball fan. Big Five basketball, to be specific. So I grew up on tales of rivalries between St. Joe's and LaSalle and deafening, earsplitting games at the Palestra. Of course, there were also always the Celtics. And for me, Bill Walton and Pete Maravich. Or my dad's favorites - Wilt and Bill Bradley. There was also football - mostly college games, where I developed my fascination with half-time shows, which drew me into my high school years of marching band dominating my entire social life (yes, I was a band geek).

With the exception of one Yankees game my first year out of college, I never knew anything about baseball until my first year of law school, where I discovered Fenway and the lure of the green wall and the bleachers (much more enticing than spending a fall afternoon in a Contracts lecture).

So I am a Red Sox fan - except I live in Philadelphia and I have a son. So we are Phillies fans (his other favorite team is the Orioles - he doesn't know red from white socks at this point). And last night, we all watched a little slice of baseball history being made.

Sensitivity Training

Most days, JR comes off as a rough and tumble little boy. He goes everywhere these days with his baseball glove and ball, tossing the ball high into the air as he saunters down the street. He builds frightening monsters and fighting rockets out of Legos and K'Nects. He sings scatological songs.

But every so often, he does something to remind me that he truly is a sensitive little boy.

On Wednesdays, our library stays open into the evening. So after dinner, we took a walk over to replenish our supply of books. JR loaded up on nonfiction books about ships and fighter jets. I picked up a couple mysteries for me and suggested that we also get Roald Dahl's "James and the Giant Peach" to read together, as we have not read a chapter book together (since we abandoned Harry Potter early in Book 5, jointly deciding that the 16-year-old Harry's life was a bit too much for the 5-year JR). I'd never read it but have heard the book described as a wonderful classic kids book. I did read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as a kid with my dad, and loved it.

Back at home, having finished our first water ices of the season, we snuggled on the couch and began to read Chapter 1 of "James and the Giant Peach." I read through the idyllic life on the beach of 4-year-old James, his parents' trip to London, their demise at the hands of the escaped giant rhinoceros and James' move to live with his less-than-loving aunts. JR burst into tears. "It's so sad," he sobbed. I told him that the book flap said that James was going to have wonderful adventures. He continued to sob. I skimmed silently through Chapters 2 and 3 and read to him the passage where James is given the living crystal seeds. "I can't stop thinking about him," he gulped between giant tears rolling down his little face.

He was still visibly saddened through bath time and when we settled him into bed, he instructed me "No more James and the Giant Peach." So we started in on one of JR's picks from the library - a new book about stealth fighter jets - and he settled into a comfortable sleep.

Radishes!

After six long summers, we've finally scored a plot in our community garden. JR was initially an enthusiastic gardener - he helped me pick out vegetables and flowers to plant, he picked out his own kid gardener gloves and trowel, he planted the seeds, he watered with abandon.

But it's been 3 weeks now, and his world is baseball all the time, so it's been left to me to squeeze in a little time now and again to water and weed. Monday evening I finally had the chance to thin out the carrots and radishes (selective reduction?) and while trying to choose which plants to pull and which to let grow, I found a radish. A full grown, round, red, radish bursting from the ground.

Tonight there was a second one. I feel so proud.