Re-Reading What I Write

Still, when you write, it
doesn’t do to sound all wishy-washy: “ah-hem…. I’ve found that in my
experience, some children under certain circumstances might exhibit a
reaction…” No, much better to sound like I know what I’m talking about:
“Children want stuff” and leave the qualifying for later. But I find it hard to
re-read something where I talk as if I have any answers or get at all
prescriptive, because (very seldom, anyways, in my experience) parenting isn’t
like that. Not that I don’t act like I have a lot of the answers in front of my
kids — beyond the fact that it’s nice having somebody with that much confidence
in you, the belief in your parents’ omniscience will probably be shown to be as
essential a part of a healthy childhood as vitamins and clean air. But “having
the answers” about your own parenting sort of belies the process of struggle and
finding out things aren’t the way you always believed they would be, having to
adapt to a brand new circumstance, and letting go and being open to
it.

I have been thinking a lot about
the relationship between wanting stuff and being happy since I wrote Friday’s
entry on enduring discomfort. I suppose I should mention this is also part of
mulling Mark Epstein’s take on Buddha’s four noble truths in Thoughts
Without a Thinker and trying to remember everything the Epicureans
wrote about desire, and wondering whether the best moment when obsessively
watching old episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on dvd isn’t in the
anticipation, checking that all three kids are asleep and well, getting a cup of
water and the remote control at the ready, settling into my armchair and turning
on the dvd player.

In any case,
should I ever start up my own business, Mail Order Metaphors ™, just the
experience of paying attention while watching Søren learn to crawl will
keep me in business for at least a year (or if not not, we could always fall
back on Half Price Hyperbole™) It is, for example amazing that when he’s
finally scooted backwards into a corner and can go no further, the next push
with his arms actually puts him in crawling position. Or last night, we
discovered that scooting around on a couple of inches of water while closely
supervised in the bath tub was very satisfying for someone with his mobility
impairment. But I am digressing, trying to find a graceful segue into how I’ve
noticed that the most useful tool in learning to crawl seems to be desire, his
wanting something just out beyond his reach. Now, the brief oral gratification
of getting the object of his desire into his mouth seems to provide a maximum of
five seconds happiness, which is interesting to watch after five minutes of
fixation and struggle, but the fact that he is getting closer to being able to
be where he wants to without relying on an uncomprehending big person to lift
him there carries an altogether different sort of gratification. And how many
of the best things in my life have been by-products of an attempt to fulfill
some other now-forgotten
desire?

Wanting stuff is part of the
human condition and I think Epstein’s point in part is not that we’re meant to
transcend it so much as have a healthy perspective on it. Clearly a complicated
matter, and no doubt my understanding will change and I’ll re-read this and
cringe a little more, but then maybe part of the joys of writing down your
thoughts, like snapshots of your family, is you can look back and see growth and
change you might not notice in your day-to-day life.

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