Tag: parenting

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swimming lessons

(written in summer 2016)

It’s about 4:30 in the afternoon, and the sand piled on the concrete patio is crumbling like brown sugar against the plastic bucket of a tiny yellow bulldozer. The bulldozer beep-beeps its steady way back to pick up another load, then falls to its side as its owner loses interest and runs for the kiddie pool.

We are in the center of summer – a place of fun and exploration – at my parent’s house out in the country.

Nana and Papa don’t have a sandbox. When I mentioned in passing that our sons were really enjoying their new plastic construction toys, Papa immediately set out to devise a makeshift sandbox out of a dusty blue wading pool and two or three bags of Quik-crete. When we arrived and were ooh-ing and ah-ing over it, he told me that Quik-crete is designed specifically for playground use because of its fine grain and the fact that it is both sifted and washed, that even though it’s not as fine as the pool filter sand (that one is really fine) it’s still perfect for sandboxes.

My dad is one to elaborate beyond the answer you look for, but he carefully selected his materials with the kids in mind. When they started digging and it got dusty, he ran for the garden hose to water it down and kill the dust. He purchased a rainbow-striped beach umbrella to shade the box from mid-day sun, and sweeps the patio after every play session. He sits every afternoon of the week with our Percy in his lap, watching the other kids play with the contented look of a well-fed bullfrog on a lilypad (Papa, that is; although our Percy has mastered this zenned-out expression as well).

I often wonder if I will be that invested in such small things, and that content just watching them play.

As a parent, I recognize that my current season is one of embracing insanity. This is why we are all in such a frenzy to capture each moment, because right now there’s no time to enjoy them. That’s for later, when the kids are no longer running around naked smeared with peanut butter. I mean, I hope my kids will stop doing that someday. It’s the glory of the aged to relish grandparenthood. I don’t begrudge it to my dad, and I wish for it someday myself.

However, I have goals for my kids, in particularly my eldest. This summer she is almost five and she’s tall enough to reach the bottom in the shallow end of their in-ground pool. She loved paddling around on the lakeshore back in June, and she’s excited to learn to swim. The pool, mid-July, is at a comfortable 81 degrees, and the sun is shining hot.

My goal is that she can doggie-paddle by the end of the week. So I get in, pick her up, and put her in the water.

The sirens go off, and suddenly she’s clinging like a leech. I’ve never heard her scream this loud, and believe me, she has shown exceptional prowess in vocal intensity thus far. This is the decibel level normally reserved for fire sirens, and my ear is three inches from the source. I attempt to peel her off of me and the scream erupts, louder. My head is spinning suddenly, and being marginally stronger than a four-year-old, I push her far enough away so the sound is at least less directional.

“Nadia. Nadia! Honey, whoa, whoa, slow down.”

(banshee noises)

“Nadia, there’s nothing to be afraid of, I’m here.”

An upstairs window shatters.

I hold her at arms-length, and she is reaching for me with both arms and legs, clinging to my hands, begging me to take her out, she doesn’t like it, she doesn’t want to swim. I’m a little stunned, despite my nearly five years as a parent. This is my path as a parent, to be flummoxed beyond belief, continually bewildered. My wife joins me in the pool and extricates me from the child-leech. I stand there for a second or two, considering what is to be done.

We don’t cave often to our children. I like to claim that this has to do with carefully-curated parenting philosophies, but mostly I’m incredibly stubborn, and I hate being wrong.

My child needs to learn to swim. She needs to overcome her fears. And so help me, she’s going to do it.

When my wife passes my daughter back to me, I let her go.

She buckles her knees, goes under, and takes on water, and my heart skips a beat. I pull her quickly up, but the damage is done. I take her to the side, where she sobs and shakes uncontrollably and runs away, screaming at me. No, I won’t swim, I don’t want to, don’t make me, Daddy, please.

I’m standing, dripping, in the shallow end, watching her get as far away from me as she possibly can. My wife watches me. My dad is silent. My grandma, who lives with my parents and didn’t quite catch what happened besides the screaming, asks if Nadia is scared. I stop the bitterness before it gets out, and admit, simply, “Yes, she is.”

I don’t know how to help her be courageous, because now she’s scared of me.

By bedtime, my daughter has forgiven me, warily, and we talk quietly about trying again, about how I won’t let her go this time. I admit to her that it is scary, that I was wrong to let her go. She tells me she just wants to play, not swim. That’s okay, I say. That’s okay. I still, stubbornly, end the conversation with an insistence that she still try it sometime, that she will love it once she learns how, that if she trusts me she can learn.

Two days later, with our help, she reaches for the bottom, and learns to climb down the ladder into the shallow end, and we celebrate with her. Somehow, my heart expects more of her than that. I hate myself for it. I hate myself when she does it over and over and looks to me, face shining, and I respond by telling her, “That’s great, now try kicking!” I want her to meet my expectations and then move quickly on to the next triumph, and somehow her extended enjoyment of her little triumphs annoys me. And I hate myself again for my cold heart. I hate that I can’t move beyond myself to see her as she is, and love her without expectations, and train her with grace.

I hate that it’s so hard for me to just sit back and rejoice with her during these moments the moments of triumph with her, like Papa the zen bullfrog.

How quickly I lose the grace of parenting in service of my selfish goals for parenting.

As parents we often think that the world is simple. Eat your vegetables so you’ll be healthy. Brush your teeth so you don’t get cavities. Go to bed so you don’t get sick (and so we can have some kid-free evening time). Learn to swim so you won’t drown. All of this makes sense when you’re looking at it from five or six feet off the ground. The water only comes up to your waist. What’s so scary about that?

Well, from three feet off the ground, that water is at your neck. If you’re not careful, it’s in your lungs. How quickly I forget what it’s like to be small.

Thankfully, God doesn’t:

“The Lord is compassionate and gracious,
slow to anger, abounding in love.
He will not always accuse,
nor will he harbor his anger forever;
he does not treat us as our sins deserve
or repay us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his love for those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west,
so far has he removed our transgressions from us.

As a father has compassion on his children,
so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him;
for he knows how we are formed,
he remembers that we are dust.
The life of mortals is like grass,
they flourish like a flower of the field;
the wind blows over it and it is gone,
and its place remembers it no more.
But from everlasting to everlasting
the Lord’s love is with those who fear him,
and his righteousness with their children’s children—
with those who keep his covenant
and remember to obey his precepts.” – Psalm 103:8-18

My Heavenly Father asks a lot of me: faith, good deeds that match the newness of the life He gives us, endurance in sufferings and persistence in prayer. In the midst of all of these things — not least of which is the admonition to be perfect as He is perfect — He knows that I am small and weak. He knows that we are all dust. He actually cloaked Himself in dust and grew at our pace to prove it. And He loves us in all our dusty smallness, and gently and patiently helps us to grow. He loves us as the little children we are. He rejoices over us with singing (Zeph. 3:17).

I insisted on Nadia’s growth in swimming not because I wanted her to trust me, but because I wanted her to be better on my time table. I wanted to get the moments of growth out of the way as quickly as possible so that we could celebrate the goal – children who swam confidently, like me. My goal was the end of the matter, not the process in between. God’s goal, right now, is the process in between. Without the process, the goal would have no meaning.

We are not one-and-done creations. We are built in our faith by the moments in between. Of course we look ahead to heaven, of course we look ahead to perfection, of course we look ahead to the prize set before us. But until we get there – and God knows when that will be – we are in the thick of this scary and often overwhelming and sometimes difficult journey as dusty children.

I hurry to get where I’m going. I think little of the real work to be done in the everyday moments God gives me each day.

It wasn’t just Nadia that needed more grace from her graceless dad. I needed more grace from my Father – grace to forgive me for my belligerence, and then grace for the everyday. I needed to extend this grace to myself, understanding my smallness in light of God’s patience. And then I needed to let this grace seep into my hard heart and show Nadia the love and encouragement and patience I have received from God, time and again.

By the end of the week, I’d revised a couple philosophies, eaten a lot of humble pie, and repaired what I could of the damage. She can walk from wall to wall now in the shallow end, kick her feet while holding onto the ladder, and even bounce a little. She puts her face under the water in the kiddie pool with the help of some pink goggles we got for her and a lot of encouragement. But these matter not because of the goals, even as we celebrate each tiny triumph, but because of the slow rebuilding of trust, and a much more methodical form of courage.

I think of my zen bullfrog dad and my in-the-moment children now a little less like they’re just enjoying themselves, and more like they’ve discovered something wise that I’ve forgotten: these things take time, so why not take the time for these things?

My forgetfulness and brokenness will always break me, as it does now, as I write this. I will never achieve the grace and goodness of my perfect Father, and I will break more than this as she grows up – I will probably break her heart, and the hearts of all of my children. The only thing for me in this is the grace that has been, is, and will be, from a Father who knows my faults, how I need to grow, and just how long it will take before I can swim with the buoyancy of the faith that He is near, and He will not let me drown.

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the burden of Christmas

For the last few weeks, Christmas has felt less like a meaningful celebration of the Incarnation and more like a giant, hairy elf with terrible body odor strapped to my back. Slowly, agonizingly, this beloved holiday has been driving me into the ground with every step. I smelled it when we introduced our kids to one of our favorite classic Christmas movies and they spent the entire time running in circles around the room and hitting each other. One child, after receiving his gifts, became so fixated on all the gifts he didn’t have that we had to have several Very Serious Conversations. And then there’s those evenings when all I want is a few moments of peace to read one of fifty available Advent devotionals and my two youngest toss banshee screams back and forth like they were playing football. You lay one down and the next just picks up the cry, like some sort of infant relay system.

Of course, it’s not just the kids that get on my nerves around this time of year. It’s everything.

Buying gifts for friends and family becomes a psychotic form of Russian roulette, where our relationship hangs by the thread of dubious knowledge of each person’s deepest longings. In my waking moments, when I could be focusing on the “true meaning of Christmas,” I find myself in a catatonic state, too tired to lift a finger except to push the “next episode” button on The Crown. I feel sick to my stomach half the time from overeating or eating the wrong things or not eating enough of the right things or just because my stomach hates me maybe.

And the music. I’ve invested several months of blood, sweat, and tears in musical offerings for the season’s worship, to come out the end of it sick to death of all the beautiful, meaningful carols I’m supposed to love. (Please know that I love my church dearly, this is just how musicians generally feel at the end of the Christmas season). I’ve been nervous that I might start laughing maniacally at the starting notes of “Hark the Herald Angels Sing,” or yell “Yippee-ki-yay, $%^&#**&$^#” in the middle of the Advent candle reading. Thankfully, I’ve only heard “O Holy Night” three times this season. The fourth might signal the end of all things good and holy.

the grinch within

To cut to the chase: over the month of December, I’ve been gradually transforming into our favorite snarling bad banana with the greasy black peel. And before you think too unkindly of me, consider how many times you yourself may have thought this exact phrase: “All the noise, noise, noise, NOISE!!”

I can’t be the only person who goes a little crazy during this season, right? RIGHT? But the craziness around me isn’t the burden I’m talking about. It’s the catalyst of that burden.

It’s very easy for me to feel that if we had just done something differently, all of this would have been a very rosy Christmas memory that would have turned into tradition and eventually be recounted by teary-eyed grandchildren at our funerals. If only we had limited the sugar cookies to one instead of three. If only we had played a board game or gone on a walk instead of watching a movie. If only I could focus on all the deep theology of these carols, or take comfort in repeating the sounding joy. If only I was less selfish and more attentive, more patient, more consistent with discipline, more loving, more gentle – all the things I should be as a parent that I am so often, clearly, NOT.

the confrontation that is Christmas

This is the crushing weight of Christmas, for parents and I suspect, to some degree, for all of us. We recognize that traditions and rituals are valuable, but so many of us find ourselves bent low under the heavy load of our own expectations of the season. We’re terrified of missing opportunities to show our families love and make memories. We’re anxious about offending others or not speaking the truth enough at seasonal gatherings. We’re losing sleep over the trajectory of those closest to us, of our church, of our country, of our world, and this season brings all of those things into sharper focus. We’re worried that we’re not doing enough. We’re worried that we’re doing too much.

And then comes the clarion call of Christian culture everywhere, beckoning us to “keep Christ in Christmas.” So often, this is just another chain around the neck. Another burden on the back. Jacob Marley would be proud if he wasn’t dead as a doornail.

I’d love to inject more Christ into my Christmas, but right about now I’m sliding down my sofa, slowly and surely, like a full diaper down a toddler’s bum. A full diaper with a half-eaten plate of cookies propped up on its expanding waistline and a rising storm of child-wails emanating from the next room. The more I strive to keep Christ in Christmas, the more my efforts are thwarted by my own prodigious inability to do that very thing. Christmas confronts me with the fact that I can’t accomplish what I think I should be doing as a good Christian parent.

Every year, I feel the tension of striving and subsequent failing. I know where I want to be, in mindset and action, but I cannot achieve it. Certainly it’s true that the problem is within me, not within these rituals and reminders. It is my obsessive desire to prove myself worthy, to show God how pious I am, to show that I am of great use to Him and a great dad to my kids. You see, the problem is not that I cannot achieve Christmas nirvana because I’m weak, but that I keep expecting myself to overcome my weakness by my own effort.

the comfort of not having to do all that stuff

The burden of our modern Christmas is like the Law: shot through with a better thing, designed for a better purpose. It reminds us that we are weak and dearly loved, and that yes – all will be well, and all manner of things will be well. But this is true not because of something we muster up within ourselves as good Christians, but because Christ has accomplished for us what we could never accomplish on our own.

This is why Advent is spoken of so often in terms of peace, comfort, and rest. Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak comfort to Jerusalem, for her warfare is ended. Fear not, for I bring good tidings: Jesus has come to save you when you couldn’t save yourself.

All of my struggles and efforts reveal how much I need God. And His response to my need was to reveal His love in the Babe in the manger, the Man on the cross, the Risen Savior. For our Father so deeply loved the world that He sent His only Son to reveal the deep love of the Father to us.

And this only Son longs to give us rest:

“Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”

Matthew 11:28-30

Christmas, ultimately, is another opportunity to let go of my striving and receive the free and glorious gift of Christ. In my fallow, frozen ground, the Seed of the manger takes root, and the Messiah lives within me.

a prayer for those burdened by the holidays

For all the things I have done and left undone – forgive me, Father. But for all the things that serve to bring to light my need of You, I give You thanks. For all the reminders that I am weak and You are strong, I give You thanks. For all the things I don’t have to do, or read, or say, or be in order to be loved by You, the devotionals I don’t have to read, the carols I don’t have to sing, the rituals I don’t have to observe, the wars I don’t have to win, the peace I don’t have to locate, the energy I don’t have to gather: I give You thanks.

And I give You thanks that in freedom, I can partake of these gifts.

For the gift of Christ that requires no commensurate gift, no intentional ritual, no offering, excellent or otherwise, no decoration or tinsel: The gift of Your Son, Who takes away the sin of the world, lifts the burdens from our backs, and gives us true and lasting rest – we give You praise.

May You release us again from these burdens into Your arms, You Who transforms everything. May we see with new eyes and know with new hearts the beauty in all of this brokenness, and make something beautiful of it in the name of Christ.

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the metamorphosis of moments

(pictures by Anna and Linnea Wheeler)

My daughter loves creatures of all sorts, and has very little fear of them.

This summer, since moving to the country, we’ve had a steady stream of creatures (mostly of the six-legged variety) traipsing through our house in a variety of Mason jars and cardboard boxes. Nadia has an inquiring mind and a motherly attitude toward most creatures, so she spends concentrated effort on creating “homes” for everything that crosses her path – filled with soft grass, dirt to dig in, twigs to climb on, water to drink, leaves to eat. All the comforts of home.

A running list of occupants would include pill bugs, earthworms, beetles, caterpillars, butterflies, moths, beetles, stink bugs, grasshoppers, lightning bugs, and numerous toads and frogs. When we found a baker’s dozen of garden spiders in the back field she begged to catch one and keep it (we avoided that one – their bite can be pretty uncomfortable…) She is desperately hoping to catch a mouse right now with the aid of a trap she and Papa rigged up – a two-by-four ramp up to a deep bucket, smeared with peanut butter. She also regularly visits the back field on safari, searching for snakes and, really, anything that moves.

But the highlight of this summer has been caterpillars.

The facts of nature

We had the distinct honor of playing host to at least twenty different caterpillars over the last three months. Several died off, most were released, and some were disposed of. The tent caterpillars, we quickly discovered, were dastardly, and for the sake of Nana and Papa’s foliage Nadia has now become a tent caterpillar crusher. “Oh, that’s a bad one!” she’ll state in a matter-of-fact tone, and then matter-of-factly smush it under her shoe, wipe it off on the grass, and go on playing. So much for loving all living things. But let’s be honest, this one may be more of an effect of the fall than the pollinating varieties.

Nadia, generally, takes these facts of nature in stride. If an insect is destroying something good, it only makes sense to make sure it is destroyed. It’s fascinating to watch those garden spiders wrap up pests and remember that each eight-legged wonder is doing its part to balance the ecosystem, all from the center of an architectural structure that still confounds scientists. Admittedly, “Charlotte’s Web” also endeared her to spiders.

But there are more beautiful examples of God’s work in the world, and we had two very special caterpillars who made it to chrysalis stage – a black swallowtail and a monarch.

Nadia fed each of them studiously, every day, watching carefully for the moment they hooked themselves to the twig she provided or arranged themselves in the appropriate J-shape. We missed the chrysalis process for both of them. Each morning Nadia came careening into the room, eyes shining. “The caterpillar made a chrysalis!” and we would go and look at it, admiring the tiny skin it left on the floor of the butterfly cage.

We also missed the emergence of the swallowtail. It skipped church, and when we got home it was already fluttering about in the cage.

The monarch, however, was a late arrival, and we were determined to keep a close eye on it, marking the color of the chrysalis as the days passed. One evening it turned transparent, and we knew the time was coming.

transformation in real time

The following morning I was perched in my writer’s tower, tapping away at some project or another, when I heard my wife shrieking from downstairs that it was coming out. I ran downstairs (the emerging process is literally less than a minute) to find my entire family huddled around the cage, watching in awe as a wrinkled, chubby butterfly pushed it’s bulk out of the tiny capsule. It’s abdomen was enormous, full of fluids destined for new wings, and after it escaped from the case it clung to the outside and slowly pumped those fluids into its wings, quadrupling them in size.

I had never seen this. I caught insects all of my life, pinned them in boxes, knew dozens of facts about them. But I’d never seen the actual emergence from the chrysalis, and I really didn’t expect to be so surprised by it.

After all the waiting and anticipation, I was stunned by how weird and ungainly a newly emerged butterfly was, the proportions all off, these kind of remnants of caterpillar-ness lingering in its body. I was stunned by how quickly it slid out, with perfectly formed and sized strong legs to cling to the case while the rest of its body caught up with it. I was stunned by how it swung itself back and forth to get the fluids flowing into its wings, how it knew exactly what its body needed. And finally, when the wings were done, I was stunned at how that chubby little caterpillar had turned into this gorgeous monarch. I knew in my head that this happened. But I had just seen it in real time.

Here are some more stunning things about monarchs: they are the only insect that makes a two-way migration. They store up on nectar and then travel over 3000 miles south and west to California and Mexico to escape the cold winters of the north. They travel to the same trees that their parents did. Even though they will not make it all the way back to our garden by next year, their great-grandbutterflies will.

I’m not sure how often I think about growth in terms of cycles of transformation, but evidence abounds that that is how God works in our world and in our lives.

cycles of growth

This caterpillar spent all summer eating – nourishing its body on milkweed. And when it was ready, it instinctively followed the exact same process every monarch caterpillar does, shedding its skin to create a case. And in that case, hidden from view, its entire physical form changed. Then, when it was done, it came out – vestiges of its clumsy stage with it – and pumped its wings full of life until it was ready to fly. To escape the coming winter, it will fly to a warmer climate, then return home to lay more eggs… and the cycle begins again with the next generation.

I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to see these sorts of stages in my own life, but sometimes I catch a glimpse of them in my children. I notice, for instance, that Percy is losing some of his baby chub and getting taller. His face is thinner. He talks more coherently and with more expression. Malakai surprises us daily with new thoughts about the world. The other day he said that he was looking forward to dying, because then he can fly and eat food all the time, and never go to bed because there’s no night in heaven. Not a bad perspective, when you come down to it – even though it’s limited. But the point is that his perspective is growing, like him. Louisa cuts a baby tooth and tongues it. Nadia cuts a grown-up tooth and plots about what she’ll do with the loot from the tooth fairy. And by comparison and reflection and looking closely, we see this growth.

How this growth happens is often a mystery. We can only nurture them as best we can with the nourishment we’ve been given – memorizing the Word, praying the prayers, showing them beautiful things, drying the tears, giving liberal amounts of hugs and kisses, putting food on the table, giving them medicine when they’re sick, removing destructive things from their lives, making sure they sleep… it’s never a single piece. It’s an ecosystem. Sometimes we’re the milkweed, sometimes we’re the twig, sometimes we’re the spider. Sometimes we’re the little girl who feeds it.

in light of who we were

We only notice these subtle cycles when we look closely at where they were and where they are. But the change is happening, every moment of every hour of every day of every week, month, year, decade… and then suddenly you’re an adult and going off to college and getting married and having kids of your own and you live for ten years in Chicago and then move to Indiana and when you visit your friends back in Chicago for a weekend it all comes flooding back and you see just how much you’ve all grown and changed… but only in retrospect, and only in light of who you were.

Does a caterpillar know what stage of transformation it’s in? Does it realize that it’s turning into something new? Or is it just thinking caterpillar thoughts like,

“Wow, I just destroyed that leaf. Welp, on to the next one.”

“Okay, time to hang upside down for a little bit, spin a little something. Boy, I’m tired.”

“Oh man, gotta stretch these things on my back… wait a minute. Where did those come from?”

I like to think, when I’m feeling purely unscientific, that it’s a little bit of a surprise for the caterpillar when it takes off for the first time.

nurturing the unfolding

The past is instructive, the present is hard to pin down, and the future is uncertain. But by God’s grace, there is still growth to be had, by increments and in cycles and through metamorphosis.

Nadia, of course, had the privilege of carefully assisting the new monarch out of its netted cage. It crawled onto her cupped hand and she drew it out of the cage. It fluttered away, rising to the height of the ornamental pear tree in our front yard, landing on a leaf and slowly opening and closing its new wings. It soaked in the sun for a long while, and we didn’t see where it flew off to. But next year we’ll see new ones, which will lay new eggs on some milkweed leaf in the back, and maybe my newly minted 7-year-old daughter, gap-toothed and coltish, will locate the leaf and nurture the caterpillar and watch the next generation unfold.

Watching and guarding and nurturing that unfolding, right now, is the gift that Linnea and I have been given, like our parents before us and back for generations. May we learn what we can from the moments, knowing that transformation is happening – in hearts and minds and bodies, in mysterious and holy ways.

 

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she's four, after all.

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“Daddy, I want to show you something,” she crows, skipping down the park path.
About ten minutes ago, they’d both gotten cold and decided the splash pad wasn’t as interesting anymore. Her brother is content to sit, hooded in his yellow-striped towel, and watch trains go by, periodically yelling “TRAIN!” to Mommy.  But she is too excited.  Her shivers are gone, and the muggy weight of late summer is a suitable towel.  There is much to explore.
She clambers up the red sandy concrete of the skate park half-pipe.  The sign says that the walkway is not for pedestrians, but whoever skated here recently is long gone.  My adult mind dismisses any danger and hopes her exploration is meaningful.  I trail behind, soaking in the moment and my clothes.  The splash pad looked like a lot of fun, what can I say.
She wants to show me how she can climb up all by herself.  She is brimming with excitement and fourness. She filled up on the latter yesterday, overflowing with balloons and ribbons and this new purple bike with its white plastic basket.  $10 on Craigslist. We’re proud of that.
She got to choose her cake – pink cake with blueberries on top – and helped Mommy make it in the afternoon.  That is, after she spent a couple hours working on her bike skills.  Bikes are freedom, wild and unrestrained and a little bit dangerous.  Wheels to take to places, baskets to carry your treasures, the open road, the wind in your face.  Am I that different, in my late 20s, stretching the bonds of my 5-year job, sniffing the wind for the next thing?
But she’s back, and will not be ignored.  She slid down the half-pipe against my wishes (she’s four, after all), leaving a wet stripe on the curve.  Scratches?  None, to be sure, but I ask anyway. She confirms that my concern is silly.  I knew it was.  I just wanted to be concerned.
She climbs again, and shows me how brave she is, walking back and forth on the foot-wide ledge without my help (she’s four, after all).  She is brave.  She’ll have to be.  She stops and sits and, finding the concrete warm from the day, stretches out.  She is cozy in her fourness, wrapped in bravery and good cheer and, I hope, the knowledge that I’m nearby. I stand by her and lean on the half-pipe (“Not too close!”) and we talk about things that little girls talk about with their daddies.
Earlier, some teenage punks – daughters and sons reveling in their sixteenness – swarmed the swings right as she flitted toward them.  And she stopped, and considered them.  They were foreign, turquoise hair and flat brims and skinny jeans and ill-fitting boots.  Did she glimpse something of her future?  I was far away when she turned, and my outrage was tempered when she didn’t care.  But I wanted her to ask them if she could swing.  I wanted them to see her.  I wanted them to remember, maybe, what it is to be small in a big world.  My guess is, they know, but don’t talk about it often.
She is so old right now, and so young.  So taken with her world and her self, squealing at spiders and playing peekaboo with the princess in the mirror.  Her name is Nadia too, and they both have blue eyes and curls and a smile that stops my heart.  She’s learning to pray, to listen when I talk to her about Jesus, though it’s clear the Wonder hasn’t penetrated her heart. We pray it will and we walk alongside her. She is so tender, breakable at the smallest slight, fierce in her wrath, tempestuous in her sorrow.
She is four.
There are many birth-days ahead, when we celebrate her being zero before this, and one, and two, and three… We count them with thankful hearts for a safe pregnancy and delivery, which is withheld from so many others for reasons impossible to understand without the mind of God.  We count them with happy hearts for the life coursing in her veins, overflowing in her laughter, and we celebrate with toys and games and sweets to show her she is worth celebrating.
We count them to remember: the coughing cry, the excitement and surprise at a girl when everyone said boy, the squinched-up eyes that opened dark and sweet and perpetually suspicious.  How I hated it when medical punks woke her in the night to poke and prod and test, when we only wanted her to know love, not professional disinterest.
Do these only get harder, days brilliant and sharp-edged and rare, diamonds of summer?  I’m collecting them for my winter years, to uncover and admire – will they be as clear then? – to remind her of her summer when her children are in theirs. In our hearts we all need this.
She wants to sit and watch the sun go down, and I do too, so we linger longer.  Her brother has since given up sitting and is racing up and down ramps, tripping and colliding into everything and bouncing back with skinned knees, unperturbed.  He experiences life differently at two. His sister has time to sit and enjoy sunsets.
All the time in the world. She’s four, after all.