The other day the kids and I were playing together on the floor, and before I even knew what I was saying, a question for my eldest popped out of my mouth:
"Grace, are we rich or poor?"
Without missing a beat or even wasting a nanosecond to look up from the task at hand of building Cinderella's castle out of megabloks, she answered me with one word.
"Rich," she said, in her most no-nonsense manner, but not without shooting me a quick look that said, "...and I would have thought that was obvious." I'm very grateful she didn't add, "...duh!" At least not out loud.
And that was all she had to say on the subject, because more important matters were pressing, such as why in the world I would ever put Cinderella's bed over there in the ballroom, was I crazy?
I had to look away when I realized I was crying again (oh what else is new). I mean, she was insulting my interior design skills! Kidding. This wasn't my usual everyday melodrama--it actually took me a few beats to recognize that I was weeping with, what was it, oh yes, relief. Relief, I remember you! Seems that my daughter's one-word, automatic, tossed-off-without-a-thought response to my weird, inappropriate, out-of-the-blue question had made one thing very obvious, and this was no little thing to apprehend.
She's still where she needs to be. At the ripe old age of five we haven't been able to drive the Truth out of her,
Calvin was playing along with us there on the floor, doing his part to make a great castle-- totally uninterested in the conversation, at least to the casual observer. I can't put the same types of questions to Calvin that I do to Gracie. If I do, he'll usually answer by doing something like pulling up my shirt, exposing skin around my Michelin Man section, and burrowing his head in there like Winnie the Pooh diving into a pot full of honey. It's especially great when he does this in public. I've finally given in and started doing Pilates--it's my only recourse at this point. Sometimes I'm sorry I didn't breastfeed him longer, he and I made a mutual decision to stop over a year ago when he was just two; but then again, were we still doing that I'd probably have more than my spare tire on display on a regular basis, and even a raging exhibitionist like myself has her limits.
Anyway, what I'm getting at is I can't interview Cal in quite the same way I do his sister about the state of his prosperity consciousness, at least not yet. But he has other ways of letting me know his take on the matter. In the morning, I know he's awake because I hear the belly laughs. I go in to get him, and he's usually sitting straight up in bed, blankets wrapped around him, looking like a flaxen-haired papoose, grinning at me with a wide-open mouth. When people talk about twinkling eyes, I know it usually sounds like just a dopey, corny, banal figure of speech--Christmas tree lights do that, not people's eyes. Except that Calvin's DO do that, sorry, you'll just have to take my word for it. Maybe it's the morning light. But at any rate, I go to greet him and get him started on his day, and we're usually behind schedule, let's hop to it, spit spot! Except that his plan, every single time, is to grab me around the neck with a vice grip as soon as I get close enough, pull me down into a full-out, roll-around snuggle, and continue to laugh and gurgle and chortle at me until he lets me know he's ready to move on to a dry diaper and breakfast time. A thousand hugs and kisses for Mommy before breakfast...that's one special needs child who knows my special needs.
This all somehow gives me the feeling that he's on the same page as his sister with his answer to the rich/poor question. Just a hunch, but I don't think he'd give off a more opulent vibe if he suddenly called for his pipe and called for his bowl and called for his fiddlers three.
So that's where they stand. And me? Well, I have a better sense of what my real work is than I did before I sat down to talk to you today. If I've managed not to wring this genius out of them, not to throw off their inner compass despite the hurricanes of fear that get kicked up into the air around them more often than I'd like, isn't that a miracle big enough to make you sure more are coming? Or even as good as here?
Can I have brains enough to let them take me where they are, take me there to stay?
Someone said it a long time ago. And a little child shall lead them.
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