Do That Stuff

Now that my children are older, I can read.  I mean read books for myself.  I have been reading about Leonardo the terrible monster for years.  And I still do.  However, most nights now I don't collapse into bed and pass out (not immediately, anyway).  I can usually squeeze in a couple of pages. Moreover, when they are playing in the yard, sometimes they stop fighting long enough for me to read a chapter or two. 

I was reading this book for my book club, Mennonite in a Little Black Dress, (Do we still underline book titles?  Marthe? Sarah?), and it was entertaining, I suppose.  I try not to be a snob.  Anyway, there were two things she said in the book that were not necessarily profound, but I thought, "This is exactly how I feel about this subject, I just had not put it into words."  

The first thing is about children.  (The second thing I will write about in another post.)  The author, Rhoda Janzen, does not have children, and she was writing about visiting a close friend, Eva, who has two daughters. I was going to just pull out the sentence that really hit home for me, but I will just type the whole excerpt because I think it better expresses the point.

      

      "Eva left Matea and Hazel largely alone.  They tore through the house in April dressed in Christmas garland and tinfoil; they grooved to the beat of a Mennonite mandolin; they sang songs from the Opera of Life ("Lalalala, I cut this worm in HALF, lala!  There's a Hair on my toothbrush, lalalalala!")  Eva usually remained in the background, watching but not interrupting.  So many parents feel that they must respond to every single word out of their children's mouths, even when the children are are merely giving voice to an unfiltered inner monologue.  Eva's willingness to let her daughters play on their own seemed refreshingly like trust.  She didn't neglect them or avoid them, by any means.  They delighted her.  But she exercised faith in the process of just being.  My other friends had polyglot kids, equestrian kids, classical guitar kids.  Eva's kids just ran around and did stuff."

If I could boil down my desire for my children's childhood to one sentence, it would be that.  That they just ran around and did stuff.