Sunday, August 10, 2014

Driving North as the Children Fly North West

The children are in Illinois visiting their father's parents; I am in Clark's Summit PA, far far away from them (though not alone: goodness there's a lot of traffic wedged into this scenic, evergreen- dense, cleft in the mountains).

I cling to those child psych books that tout "Loving, Authoritative Parenting" because maybe I can still pull those off, at least sometimes?

Loving?  Check!  I love the little buggers to pieces. I think I am pretty good at emoting that (though sometimes I do also emote irritation and other less pleasant things).
Authoritative?  On a good day, I manage to be calm and in control (On a bad day I am hectoring ineptitude embodied).
Parenting?  I try.  I try to be there.  I try to be There with them when I'm there.

I miss them.  Should they come to read this blog (angrily perhaps: how dare I pimp out their lives to a world of unknown readers?  For what?). . . Anyway.  Should they come to read this blog themselves one day, I hope what they find here is how much I love them.

I am going to use the hotel pool now.  They would love it.  I will miss them (and there will also be a tiny bit of pleasure, guilty pleasure, because I will be able to swim rather than lifeguard).

They would have hated the drive.  As WYPR faded into the Harrisburg Public radio station, I managed to catch the same episode of Prairie Home Companion, twice!

Thursday, August 7, 2014

The Big Bravo/ Boo Hoo

It's the last week of a month of camp.  Last night Clara and Winton both performed in a production involving snippets of music from the movies.

Why does it make me cry?  They are both so cute, so small, and so easy to lose in the teeming children on stage.  They, like their peers, are by turns enthusiastic, shy, surprisingly good, and distractedly incompetent.

Seeing Winton do macho-moves to Mission Impossible, and Clara race around to Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang, was the crying pride or love or the sense that even as they were performing their childhood was slipping away and so there was nostalgia even as the performance was still happening?

I don't know.  But I enjoyed it.  And I cried.