If there is one thing I have learned from my 9 years of
being a Mom, parenting is not like riding a bicycle. There is no mastery.
I forget what I am doing and crash almost daily. Take for instance yesterday. It is appropriate that we started the
school year with a paint party and finished with one. The first one the kids behaved badly. At this one, it was me. I know, I know, I know, after all of my
righteous indignation over the little girls walking around judging whose hearts
looked like they were “supposed to” and whose looked bad; I sat there being
very grumpy that Lauren’s deer did not look like everyone else’s. What can I say? I got swept up in the completed piece
sitting at the front of the class with it’s sweet little face, standing in the
snow, speckled with spots. It was
precious. I could just see it
hanging over her bed. Alas, we
came home with an entirely blue deer since Lauren’s deer was swimming. No snow. No sweet face.
I sat there, watching as everyone else went from the sky, to
the outline of the deer, to the inside of the deer, the ground and the final
touches. Lauren had wanted me to
sit right by her, giving her confidence and protection from any outside forces
that might hamper her mojo.
Instead, she got this.
“Don’t forget to put the blue lines where you want the sky to end like
the teacher said so the blue doesn’t go down too far. Go ahead and outline your deer so you don’t loose it honey. Do you want the brown on your brush for
that? “ I was a constant stream of
suggestions. Soon, she had become
timid with her brush strokes and was chewing her hair. I hate people standing over me when I
paint. It is a process, one that
often looks stupid while I am in the middle of it. I wouldn’t want over suggestive Mom hovering over me.
Soo, I went outside.
I made the mistake in my foul mood of saying I had to leave because I
couldn’t take it. Of course I got
the subtle tisk-tisk from the Moms who were in full-blown Zen mode with their
kids painting whatever and however they wanted (of course for every single one
of them that included a brown deer with a sweet face, a blue sky and solid
ground). I understand, I too have
been the tisk-tisk Zen Mom. I have
looked at high strung women and thought, “Life is too short to get all worked
up over what your kid is painting.
What is wrong with you?
Lighten up. Let them have
fun, that is what this is all about.”
But for me, I realized, the
fun wasn’t what it was all about.
It was about Lauren being different. All year long she has struggled with not making friends
because she is different. She
struggles because the way she learns is different. The way she interprets the world is different. So of course, absolutely the way she
paints is going to be different.
But sometimes, I just want her to be like everybody else. I want everyone to look at her deer and
see a brown deer. Not a blue
silhouette of a deer splashing in an endless sea of blue where the sky and the
water meet barely distinguished one from the other.
In the midst of my parent pity party, the little boy sitting
next to Lauren looked at her picture and in complete earnest said, “I really
like your sky. It isn’t like mine
but I really like how you are doing it.”
I hate to admit I left the party still sulky even after that
little boy poignantly delivered the Mom lesson I needed to hear. By the time I got home, I started
to get some perspective. I started
to see the beauty in this painting my 7 year old had done with nothing but blue
and white. It wasn’t how I would
have done it or how 20 other kids would have done it. It is totally different but just as beautiful. It isn’t easy to have a different
child. You worry because the
majority of people are never going to get them. But, some people do and that is worth more than 100 sweet-faced
deer with browns coats and white speckles.
