Fecal Matters

Last night, I was paying bills when J came into the kitchen laughing so hard he had tears streaming down his face. I asked him what was so funny. Words escaped him as he attempted to gasp out an answer, so he simply handed me a small, photo copied book that he had found in R’s backpack.

It was bound neatly at the top by two staples, clearly the work of an adult. The front cover featured two cartoon children, one a boy and one a girl. Above them, the book read My First Day of School By R. R had neatly printed his name on the line provided and colored the pictured children in with crayons.

“What a fun idea,” I thought, making mental note to add it to his box of keepsakes.

I continued to flip through the book. There was a page with a picture of a red schoolhouse. R’s teacher had neatly written the name of his school at the bottom of the page, and again, crayons were his choice of medium. A self-portrait of R followed, and then a page with his teacher’s name, and another page that listed the number of boys and girls in his class.

By this point, I was feeling pretty warm and fuzzy about his upcoming kindergarten experience. With a sentimental smile on my lips, I flipped to the next page, and this is what I saw:

Stunned, I wasn’t sure I had read it correctly the first time, but after looking at the accompanying drawing, there was no doubt about it. It was what I thought it was, and it explained J’s uncontrolled mirth.

After I recovered from my own uncontrolled laughing, crying, gasping fit, (trying to be as silent as possible so R couldn’t hear me from the next room) I went from feeling amused to mortified. Had his teacher seen his all-too-accurate depiction of a pile of feces? Perhaps if she had just seen the drawing, she thought he wanted to learn more about baking bread. However, R had left nothing to chance by carefully printing the word P-O-O-P at the top of the page.

I composed myself, banished J to our bedroom (he can’t keep a straight face when dealing with situations like this to save his life) and sat down to have a chat with the R-man.

ME: “R, I really like this book that you made at school today, but there’s something that I want to talk to you about.”

R: “What?”

ME: (Holding up page in question): “Why did you write that you want to learn more about poop?”

R: “It’s the word I can spell and write the best besides my name.”

ME: “Why did you need to write it out? (Pleading tone enters my voice.) Couldn’t you have just drawn a picture?”

R: “I wanted to make sure everyone knew what it was.”

The conversation ended with us brainstorming (with J’s help) other topics that R would like to learn more about this year (dinosaurs, volcanoes, counting money, and reading) and outlining the only occasions in which “poop” will be an appropriate response to a school assignment in the future (while studying the digestive system or dissecting owl pellets in science class).

Luckily, I think R’s teacher has been working with 5-and-6-year-olds long enough to find a modicum of humor in this situation. The next time I see her though, I will be wondering if the twinkle in her eye has anything to do with the first assignment R did in her classroom. To all of my elementary teacher friends, there is a special place behind the pearly gates for you someday.

A New Beginning

Before he finally crawled, R spent months on his hands and knees, hind end in the air, rocking back and forth. Occasionally his top-heaviness would get the better of him, and he would lean too far forward and tumble over. The first time he managed to coordinate hands, knees and feet in a way that allowed him to move across the living room floor, I startled him with my sudden shrieks, urging his dad to come and see what he was doing (I’ve found that subsequent children don’t suffer nearly the level of post-traumatic stress that first-borns are subjected to, not because we aren’t just as excited by their feats, but because we’ve seen the effect too much enthusiasm can have). After he recovered from his shell shock, R continued across the living room floor, but paused to look back over his shoulder at us, as if to reassure himself that we were still where he had left us, grinning like idiots.

He was not nearly so cautious a few months later when he started walking. With the abandon of someone who has never fallen from an upright position before, R would suddenly let go of the furniture that separated him from disaster and attempt a step. I once thought that stretching one’s arms out in front of the body in an attempt to protect it from hitting the ground was an in-born reflex, but it’s not. It turns out that it’s a learned response to painful stimuli. There’s really no other way to teach this important life lesson. I would follow him as he barreled around on his toddler legs, trying to anticipate any unsteadiness that might lead to a face-plant, but in the end, I had to let him fall a couple of times before he understood the arm-face-pain connection.

Having mastered the art of bipedalism, the world was R’s oyster. He no longer cared for being confined to a stroller or held in someone’s arms. With the ability to propel his own body forward, he could now go where HE wanted to go to see the things that HE wanted to see. Shopping malls, parks, the grocery store parking lot and our own front yard became meccas for his exploration and exercises in terror for me when he would wander too far away. I wanted to run after him, scoop him up and keep him close to me.

One day several months ago, I took R to an empty parking lot with the intention of teaching him to ride his bike without training wheels. He insisted that I absolutely not let go of the seat of his bike. He even made me promise that I wouldn’t let go before he would agree to pedal forward. Dutifully, I held on to the seat while he wobbled along, painfully slow, trying to find his center of gravity. I noticed that the tighter I held on to his bike seat, the wobblier the bike became. When I loosened my grip and rested my hand lightly on the seat, R adjusted his weight so that he was centered on the bike and pedaled forward smoothly. After several rounds of practice, R’s riding had improved so much that I was having trouble keeping up with him to hold on to the back of the seat at all. I let go, and he took off across the parking lot, pedaling as fast as his little legs would allow him. At some point, he realized I wasn’t behind him, looked back to see where I was, and crashed.

Of course, he was really mad at me, and reminded me repeatedly of my promise. Looking sullenly at his scraped knees and hands, he insisted that he was never going to learn how to ride a bike. I reminded him that he WAS riding his bike until he stopped, but that we could pack his bike up and go home now if he didn’t want to ride anymore. (Never challenge a kid who likes a good challenge by implying that he CAN’T do something.) Twenty minutes later, R was flying across the parking lot while I cheered him on. I was thrilled that he had come so far in one afternoon, but as I watched his retreating figure grow tinier and tinier, a little voice in my heart wanted to shout, “Too far, come back to me!”

Tomorrow, J and I will drop R off at the doors of his elementary school and watch him as he makes his way into the gymnasium to join his kindergarten class. I will stand there with other mothers of ingoing kindergartners (We’ll be the ones with runny eyeliner, clutching fistfuls of Kleenex like security blankets). Amidst the excited commotion of a new school year, alongside sixth graders who will be twice his size, and under the supervision of what I believe will be a delightfully fun, but firm teacher, R will begin a new journey that will take him a little farther from us.

Parenting is a constant cycle of holding on and letting go, of pushing forward and pulling back. Sometimes the lessons are painful, and sometimes they are triumphant. I guess the best we can hope for is that our kids know that we will stay constant, so that when they need to look back and find us, we will be right where they left us.

So, here’s to a new beginning and 13 years of science fair projects, field trip permission slips, and finding out at 11 o’clock the night before the school chili feed that your kid was supposed to ask you to bake 6 dozen brownies.