Powdered Wings and Index Fingers
This gentle soul I was entrusted with a number of years ago, I want you to know how proud I am of him. He's learning and growing every day, and like all humans makes a lot of 're-re' mistakes as he goes along that road. He's also the biggest heart I've ever known, and that makes me so proud.
When he was two, I witnessed him crumble, sob bitter tears and in a matter of minutes recover enough to give his grandma "what for". As I drove him to school this morning, he tracked and smashed this defenseless little moth-type creature on the dashboard. As I picked up my coffee cup so the corpse didn't land in my morning Lifeline, I had to chuckle that he used to not be such a killer. Then I told him this story.
But before I get there, you have to understand where I stand on bug killing--because this is a generational story, and I'm about to be the missing link implied in the text, not a main player at all. As a preschooler I was obsessed with the sand box in the back yard. Loved sand, love to trickle it through my fingers and bury myself in it and watch it shift and feel it scrub and scruffle...now that we know about the whole autism spectrum thing, that particular deep love makes a great deal of sense. Yes, the neighborhood cats loved it, too. No, even poo couldn't stop me from my love of that sand. The ants couldn't either, and it was the red-butted ones that were particularly mean, biting me relentlessly and interrupting my blissful perseverative focus. It was a pain, I would melt down, and I was told to "just smash them". So I did. Hundreds of them. It got to be a ritual. See a red ant, smash it flat, say the ritual phrase: "gone to heaven!"
People would laugh, so I learned to as well. And for any who actually know me, you also know that I will do just about anything for a laugh or applause. I was the youngest child who would somersalt randomly, jump up, and say "ta-da!" with jazz hands at the end of my extended arms. Shameless. (Shameless and autistic--I still say TA DA randomly, go figure.) So...killing the ants got to be routine, it got to be ritual, and it got to be a joke.
I was a killer, but my little Buddhist soul got to feeling guilty about that one day. I gave it up for the extended lent of my life, and I decided not to set that example for my own unknowing child. Respect for life, even at the most basic levels, is the beginning of compassion, tolerance and acceptance. If it's okay to kill ants, it's okay to throw rocks at people who are not like ourselves, or who...vote republican or wear Birkenstocks or sing at piano bars. It's okay to kill people just because they bite us in the ass. I didn't want to be that person any more, and I didn't want to pass that kind of intolerance to the next generation.
Yeah, lighten up, it's just ants! True. But it's the little things that set the tone for the larger things, I find, so ants are serious business.
As are spiders.
I have a phobia--an adrenaline exploding, palm sweating, anxiety-attack-provoking phobia. Spiders. Can't help it, I have to take a deep breath when I find one in my home. I don't like those people. Yet, when my kids got to be people in their own right (mobile, communicating and exerting their own opinions), I made an effort to rescue spiders. I instituted a catch and release policy (and resolved only to flush if little eyes could not see). Spiders, moths, flies--we didn't have many in cold-ass Idaho, but what few we had would be humbly rescued with the help of my toddler boy's dimpled hands--hands that would one day be on a six-foot tall man.
So this is an intergenerational story, let me get back to the other links in the chain. My mother, the one who told me to smash the ants, did not have a catch and release program for rehabilitation of wayward bugs. She had zero tolerance for the pests, especially if they invaded her home--especially if they had the audacity to cruise her carefully selected curtains.
One day we had come for a visit, my just-verbal toddler boy and myself, and he found a moth in the house! He watched the wings, and amused himself with it as it climbed the curtains. I had already taught him about the preciousness of moth wings, how the powder on them could be brushed off with a careless or rough touch, and how it would stop the poor creature from flying or surviving. He watched in wonder and showed me the things I had shown him, mostly without words, wheels turning furiously, eyes dancing in the joy of unexpected moth windfall.
He and I knew these secrets, but Grandma was a new person to share with! He went to the other room and got her. I could feel the train wreck coming, but couldn't manage to put the brakes on fast enough.
"Grandma! Grandma! LOOOK!" Two-year-old excitment gets a Grandma's attention quickly. When she asked him what it was, he pointed and yelled out, "MOTH!"
Two different worlds, two different ways of seeing the world. His one of wonder, and joy at the moth discovery. Hers one of invasion and seeing his excitement as fear. Me, the missing link in the chain, watching them both (understanding them both) and unable to divert the colliding of worlds.
"AGH! A moth?! Where? My curtains?! Smash it!"
Uh oh. Crash. Grind. Screeeeeeeee...it was too late. She did smash, right before my horrified son's eyes.
He screamed, cried, had that heart-rending moment of silence before an absolute wail of despair and grief and disbelief erupted. She thought he was afraid--afraid of the moth--and explained that the moth would have laid eggs in her curtains, destroying them. She tried to console fear, but that wasn't it at all--and if it was fear he felt, it sure wasn't fear of the moth but the image of his beloved Grandmother now as an executioner. A killer of powdered wings. And joy.
My heart broke for them both, how the tiny reaction to a moth can change things, change how we see each other forever.
My mom looked to me for help and explanation, even as the two-year-old before her would not be consoled. I tried to react to them both at once--but how does one bridge such a gap in an instant? I worked on distress first, with strong hands and pats on the boy's back, while my words tried to reach my mom--who was also now upset. High drama.
Then the most amazing thing happened, and the reason I'm telling this story--both to my nearly-grown, six-foot man this morning and to you here, now. My son gathered up his grief and shock and loss. He straightened his spine in front of a woman who was two generations and decades of experience his elder. He lifted his index finger. Shook it at her, no longer sobbing but deadpan serious and sober. "No, NO, Grandma! Take him outside!!!"
This is why I love two year olds. They are as honest and headstrong and true to themselves as hundred year old people. We spend our youth covering up that honesty and learning not to rock the boat. Then we spend our later years learning to not care so much about what other assholes think. Everything we ever needed to be in our lives was in place when we were two, though, it just needed a little self-control, patience and discipline. Those take a lifetime to learn.
And that, my dears, is why I think my Boy the most incredible person (aside from my Girl) I've ever met. A gentle soul, with no-longer dimpled hands, but just as kind. More than that, his kindness has a spine and a voice. Sometimes it's a beautiful thing--when worlds collide. That's when we find out what we're made of. I wish I could take credit for him. I built his catch and release philosophy, I stoked his wonder at powdery wings--but his ability to stand up and tell his Grandma "No!" even in the midst of his own hysterical grief--well, that was all him.
Love you, Boy. Glad the moth didn't hit my coffee this morning. You just keep being you.
When he was two, I witnessed him crumble, sob bitter tears and in a matter of minutes recover enough to give his grandma "what for". As I drove him to school this morning, he tracked and smashed this defenseless little moth-type creature on the dashboard. As I picked up my coffee cup so the corpse didn't land in my morning Lifeline, I had to chuckle that he used to not be such a killer. Then I told him this story.
But before I get there, you have to understand where I stand on bug killing--because this is a generational story, and I'm about to be the missing link implied in the text, not a main player at all. As a preschooler I was obsessed with the sand box in the back yard. Loved sand, love to trickle it through my fingers and bury myself in it and watch it shift and feel it scrub and scruffle...now that we know about the whole autism spectrum thing, that particular deep love makes a great deal of sense. Yes, the neighborhood cats loved it, too. No, even poo couldn't stop me from my love of that sand. The ants couldn't either, and it was the red-butted ones that were particularly mean, biting me relentlessly and interrupting my blissful perseverative focus. It was a pain, I would melt down, and I was told to "just smash them". So I did. Hundreds of them. It got to be a ritual. See a red ant, smash it flat, say the ritual phrase: "gone to heaven!"
People would laugh, so I learned to as well. And for any who actually know me, you also know that I will do just about anything for a laugh or applause. I was the youngest child who would somersalt randomly, jump up, and say "ta-da!" with jazz hands at the end of my extended arms. Shameless. (Shameless and autistic--I still say TA DA randomly, go figure.) So...killing the ants got to be routine, it got to be ritual, and it got to be a joke.
I was a killer, but my little Buddhist soul got to feeling guilty about that one day. I gave it up for the extended lent of my life, and I decided not to set that example for my own unknowing child. Respect for life, even at the most basic levels, is the beginning of compassion, tolerance and acceptance. If it's okay to kill ants, it's okay to throw rocks at people who are not like ourselves, or who...vote republican or wear Birkenstocks or sing at piano bars. It's okay to kill people just because they bite us in the ass. I didn't want to be that person any more, and I didn't want to pass that kind of intolerance to the next generation.
Yeah, lighten up, it's just ants! True. But it's the little things that set the tone for the larger things, I find, so ants are serious business.
As are spiders.
I have a phobia--an adrenaline exploding, palm sweating, anxiety-attack-provoking phobia. Spiders. Can't help it, I have to take a deep breath when I find one in my home. I don't like those people. Yet, when my kids got to be people in their own right (mobile, communicating and exerting their own opinions), I made an effort to rescue spiders. I instituted a catch and release policy (and resolved only to flush if little eyes could not see). Spiders, moths, flies--we didn't have many in cold-ass Idaho, but what few we had would be humbly rescued with the help of my toddler boy's dimpled hands--hands that would one day be on a six-foot tall man.
So this is an intergenerational story, let me get back to the other links in the chain. My mother, the one who told me to smash the ants, did not have a catch and release program for rehabilitation of wayward bugs. She had zero tolerance for the pests, especially if they invaded her home--especially if they had the audacity to cruise her carefully selected curtains.
One day we had come for a visit, my just-verbal toddler boy and myself, and he found a moth in the house! He watched the wings, and amused himself with it as it climbed the curtains. I had already taught him about the preciousness of moth wings, how the powder on them could be brushed off with a careless or rough touch, and how it would stop the poor creature from flying or surviving. He watched in wonder and showed me the things I had shown him, mostly without words, wheels turning furiously, eyes dancing in the joy of unexpected moth windfall.
He and I knew these secrets, but Grandma was a new person to share with! He went to the other room and got her. I could feel the train wreck coming, but couldn't manage to put the brakes on fast enough.
"Grandma! Grandma! LOOOK!" Two-year-old excitment gets a Grandma's attention quickly. When she asked him what it was, he pointed and yelled out, "MOTH!"
Two different worlds, two different ways of seeing the world. His one of wonder, and joy at the moth discovery. Hers one of invasion and seeing his excitement as fear. Me, the missing link in the chain, watching them both (understanding them both) and unable to divert the colliding of worlds.
"AGH! A moth?! Where? My curtains?! Smash it!"
Uh oh. Crash. Grind. Screeeeeeeee...it was too late. She did smash, right before my horrified son's eyes.
He screamed, cried, had that heart-rending moment of silence before an absolute wail of despair and grief and disbelief erupted. She thought he was afraid--afraid of the moth--and explained that the moth would have laid eggs in her curtains, destroying them. She tried to console fear, but that wasn't it at all--and if it was fear he felt, it sure wasn't fear of the moth but the image of his beloved Grandmother now as an executioner. A killer of powdered wings. And joy.
My heart broke for them both, how the tiny reaction to a moth can change things, change how we see each other forever.
My mom looked to me for help and explanation, even as the two-year-old before her would not be consoled. I tried to react to them both at once--but how does one bridge such a gap in an instant? I worked on distress first, with strong hands and pats on the boy's back, while my words tried to reach my mom--who was also now upset. High drama.
Then the most amazing thing happened, and the reason I'm telling this story--both to my nearly-grown, six-foot man this morning and to you here, now. My son gathered up his grief and shock and loss. He straightened his spine in front of a woman who was two generations and decades of experience his elder. He lifted his index finger. Shook it at her, no longer sobbing but deadpan serious and sober. "No, NO, Grandma! Take him outside!!!"
This is why I love two year olds. They are as honest and headstrong and true to themselves as hundred year old people. We spend our youth covering up that honesty and learning not to rock the boat. Then we spend our later years learning to not care so much about what other assholes think. Everything we ever needed to be in our lives was in place when we were two, though, it just needed a little self-control, patience and discipline. Those take a lifetime to learn.
And that, my dears, is why I think my Boy the most incredible person (aside from my Girl) I've ever met. A gentle soul, with no-longer dimpled hands, but just as kind. More than that, his kindness has a spine and a voice. Sometimes it's a beautiful thing--when worlds collide. That's when we find out what we're made of. I wish I could take credit for him. I built his catch and release philosophy, I stoked his wonder at powdery wings--but his ability to stand up and tell his Grandma "No!" even in the midst of his own hysterical grief--well, that was all him.
Love you, Boy. Glad the moth didn't hit my coffee this morning. You just keep being you.