Sick Day

This Thing has been going around. It is the Thing That Has No Name, to be identified only by its symptoms: fever, chills, mild nausea, lethargy, the ineluctable urge that drives children to pad through the night to hover beside their parents' bed. And the parents let them in, because parents are suckers and just want to get some sleep. I say parents, but the children always seem to materialize on my side of the bed and lay their flushed and germy faces on my pillow. It's a form of love, I think.

Today was declared a Sick Day. Two have the fever, two are recovering, and one of the convalescents has poison ivy. The happy exception to the fevered masses is Eleanor, whose 10th birthday looms ominously on Thursday, as if to provide a convenient target for an incubating ailment to suddenly irrupt. But today Eleanor was content, because sick children get to lay on the loveseat in the library and watch videos on Netflix, and when sick children hit a critical mass, even their healthy sister gets to veg. The children arranged themselves neatly on the couch, sans the kicking that usually accompanies too many bodies jockeying for position on a small sofa, for there was much anticipation: we are working our way through The Adventures of Tintin.

Tintin! The intrepid boy reporter! We never see him research anything or take any notes, nor yet send any reports in to his editor or bureau chief, and yet his reporter status confers on him a thrilling intrepid quality that can only be described as Intrepidity! He is brave and daring, even if he's a bit slow on the uptake sometimes. ("What's going on here?" he demands of a bad guy waiting for him with scimitar unsheathed.) That's okay, because between Tintin and Snowy, his little dog, the day will always be saved after plenty of adventures have ensued. The kids are absolutely hooked by the mysteriously adventurous theme music and the non-stop action.

The first fictional character on whom I had a crush was Encyclopedia Brown; I think Eleanor's will be Tintin. This sums up something fundamental about our personalities: Eleanor is drawn to derring-do and swashbuckling. When she is considering a book, her question is, "Is the whole world in danger?" (She prefers it to be saved by teenagers, but with No Kissing.) Whereas I have always liked the smart guy, and looking back to when I was circa Eleanor's age, I can see the roots of this preference. I was a small and mousy child in elementary school, neither popular nor pariah. The smart boys at school tended to be nice. One could have intelligent conversation with them on the playground. One could have swing races and shout out grandiose terms like "Altitude!" and "Longitude!" (even if one was shaky on the definitions of these fine bits of vocabulary). These boys knew how to be kind as well as witty. The handsome swashbuckling boys, by contrast, were brash, loud, overconfident, and not particularly inclined to civility or erudition. They could be mean, and they could be crude, and they teased knowingly, if ignorantly, about sex. I shrank from them, and despised them.

Eleanor, however, does not go to school, and she does not know any mean boys with their playground ways. All the boys of her acquaintance are basically good eggs, whether they like sports or science or board games. She doesn't know any jokes about sex. I'm in the happy position of raising a child who is more innocent at her age than I was at mine. In such innocence does real personality have a chance to flourish. It makes me wonder, would I like Brad Pitt more now if he didn't somehow remind me of the jerks in third grade?

Eleanor may get plenty more chances to bestow innocent admiration on Our Hero's prowess. I'm trying my best to ignore the achy sensation threatening to radiate from my spine and the subtle tightening of my skull. Oh well. If I have to spend tomorrow in bed, I'm not really worried -- I know Tintin will keep my girl safe.

Hell on Earth

Pity, oh pity, good souls, the poor suffering child whose parents pay exorbitant sums so she can be forced to take ballet class at the region's most prestigious schools. Consider, if you can bear the thought, the agony of the young girl betrayed by her own talent, leading her parents to conspire how best to torture her: "Let's sign her up for lessons because it will be so fun for us to drive 45 minutes each way every Saturday morning for a 90-minute class! And the best part is that our child will yell at us every Friday night!" Shed tears with this innocent maiden as she sobs, "Prestigious School is no fun! Mom and Dad are so mean! My class is hell!"

Ah, hell. Do you really want to tell me that doing drills at ballet class is comparable to eternal separation from God? You mean to say that you have the worst life in the whole world because your loving parents try to nurture your talent at a dance school that insists on a ballet bun? Let's talk, dear, about true suffering. Let's discuss the children whose parents beat them, the children who are starving, the children who are freezing on this cold cold night. Listen to Daddy tell the story of the man he knows whose father was a boy in Belgium when the Germans invaded, whose sister was shot dead on the morning of the invasion as she was walking to church with her family. Mommy assures you that you are so fortunate to grow up in a family with parents who love each other. My darling, there is suffering out there that is beyond your capacity to imagine right now. There are children whose life is almost literally hell on earth, who can only dream of the happy warm existence you have with your sisters and brother in this big house. Do not ever tell me again, please, that ballet class is "hell".

A pause, and fresh tears start. "I don't want to go to class! And why do I have to take a shower every Friday night?"

Time for bed.

The Grace Period

Betty's working up a great series on childhood nostalgia and the great outdoors. Here's Part 1 and Part 2, with more to come. I'm enjoying reading it as my older three girls are down the street, playing with the neighbors on the corner (and the younger two are napping, A.M.D.G). Our current neighborhood is very conducive to children charging down the sidewalks or popping in at friends' houses, and you can bet I work it to the hilt. This is easy, though -- we live in a fairly middle-class neighborhood in which kids near us (all those we've met, anyway) all come from the same basic class and educational background as we do. And as we're newer in town, we haven't had the chance to meet many people who would challenge our comfy sheltered existence.

I remember when I was young, being befriended by a girl in my second-grade class named Marcie who was, perhaps, developmentally disabled. She was probably lonely and the butt of jokes, and if I wasn't agape itself, I wasn't unkind to her. She latched onto me, even calling my house several evenings. This made me apprehensive, especially as I had a hard time understanding her thick country slur, and I recall that I begged my parents not to let me talk anymore. And they agreed that a seven-year-old was too young to be getting calls. I felt a great relief at not having to bear the solitary burden of Marcie's social life, with a tinge of guilt that I didn't want to be more compassionate.

In fourth grade, the last year before we started homeschooling, I played with a girl named April. I was uncomfortable around her, for she seemed rough and coarse, but she seemed so genuinely to want me as a friend that I pitied her. I guess I must have liked her well enough, because at some point I invited her over for a sleepover. She in her turn must have liked me well enough, because she came.

We played dolls, lining them up and setting tasks for them. One of the dollies didn't behave to April's satisfaction.

"That's it -- I'm going to have to spank you!" she announced, and began to beat away at the doll.

"Stop!" I cried. But April wouldn't leave off spanking the doll. It had been bad, she explained, and deserved it. She seemed amused by my agitation.

I ran for my mother, who seemed taken aback by the vehemence of the doll's punishment but calmly explained that we didn't play spanking games at our house. April desisted, the sleepover ended, and I didn't see her after we started homeschooling. I didn't mind not seeing her anymore, as she always made me uneasy, but I wondered who would play with her now I was gone.

My children, on the other hand, have always had a very homogenous set of friends. I don't stir far out of my comfort zone these days. We don't volunteer at soup kitchens or protest outside abortion mills or go to mass in the inner city. Come to that, we don't even know any broken families. I want to preserve this idyllic enclave for them, to keep the evils of the world at bay just a bit longer. I'm less worried about injured bodies than injured souls. We're living in the grace period now, and I know it can't last forever.