I was reading aloud to the girls from Little House in the Big Woods, the first book in the Little House on the Prairie series made famous by the fabulous 70's television show of the same name starring the lushly, curly-locked Michael Landon, when I reached the chapter about the long winter. Wilder describes how their little log cabin was almost lost in snow drifts and how they spent long, cozy days by the fire and I began to ponder a question.
How the hell did Ma not lose her damn mind and wind up rocking in a corner dressed in a dirty nightgown come spring after having spent four months cooped up in a 500 square foot house with her three children?
This winter, dear readers, has been the longest of my life thus far, including the four I spent in upstate New York, during college, where snow storms that dumped eighteen inches were the rule rather than the exception. Trying to keep three children under the age of seven occupied, relatively clean and alive has taken the better part of my sanity. Now, I know, I know, I am in a hell of my own making. Nobody told me to have three kids in quick succession, but this long season has brought into even clearer focus the amount of interaction we feel we need to have with our children and how they themselves have begun to expect it.
Do you know why Ma was sane come spring? Because she did not feel it her duty to allow her two older daughters to paint a six foot by two foot craft paper mural in the laundry room, while trying to keep her eighteen month old, who is panting with desperation to get in on the action, from tromping through the door and across the paper since her younger daughter keeps knocking over her cup of paintbrush rinse water, requiring Ma to come clean up and refill, while her older daughter squeals, "She's wrecking everything!!" No, Ma had butter to churn, bread to bake, and laundry to wash by hand, which not only prevented her from allowing her daughters to change out of a perfectly clean pair of pants because a drop of apple juice fell on them at lunch (since she really needs one more pair of pants to drag across the damn washboard) but required her children to amuse themselves if they wanted anything other than this morning's cold mush for dinner.
While I do pride myself on the fact that I make my children spend a decent amount of time playing alone, something happened this winter that made me backtrack and I found myself slogging around under the heaving weight of my guilt if I surrounded the baby with his favorite cars and trucks in order to put away some laundry. I know I have written, time and again, about the theory of parenting I believe in, handed down from the Yoda of child rearing, Dr. Spock, called "benign neglect", which allows children to become more self sufficient and able to entertain themselves without needing a power source, but I needed to remind myself of it.
So you are not alone, dear readers, in your fervent prayers that spring get here before your loved ones are reading about you in the papers. So go about your work with a light heart knowing Ma, with the three spare minutes she had for Laura a day, managed to produce a child who grew up to be a prolific author. And know in a few short weeks we will all be able to utter the sweet, sweet words that herald the beginning of the warm weather seasons, "I don't care if you want to. I told you to go outside and play."
No comments:
Post a Comment