The First Four Years

Laura Ingalls Wilder's book The First Four Years is different from the rest of the Little House series because it's the only book that was first published posthumously. She'd written a draft, but she'd never revised and edited that draft in the way that she had the other books, which have a rather different voice and structure. It's much more expository, less episodic, with fewer distinct scenes and less dialogue. I still like it, though--for one thing, it's more adult. It hasn't been rewritten for an audience of children in quite the same way or refocused on the things young girls would be interested in. It gives the impression that it's more of an unmediated reminiscence.

I realized when I started this post that January and February were the first months since I started this blog that I didn't post anything at all. It's not only that I've had less time to go back and do the kind of revision of my experiences that I like to do, but also that that kind of revision hasn't seemed as urgent as other activities--like trying to get all of us dressed and fed and into and out of baths and out to appointments and fun excursions. Part of me is okay with this shift because I've just settled in my mind that, Socrates notwithstanding, it's okay not to examine life constantly and instead to just live it.

Still, as Allison Clare turns four--and four years does seem like some kind of common reference for the passage of time, with the Olympics and the Presidential elections and leap years--I've been thinking about what I've learned as a parent. I'm no longer surprised when someone addresses me as "Mom," whether that person is my child or not (the first time a pediatric nurse addressed me as "Mom," I looked over to my own mother to see what she was going to reply). I have lots of habits now that I don't even have to think about--pushing the coffee pot way back onto the counter, moving the stool out of the kitchen when Gillian-the-climber is loose there, turning the pot handles to the back of the stove. I used to think about safety when I was in the car or doing something unusual and overtly dangerous--walking down icy stairs in heels (heck, walking in heels at all for me), driving in snow on an unsalted road, swimming way out into the ocean just because it felt really good. Now I think about it all the time--one small part of my brain is waiting to be activated at the sight of objects that might have lead paint/could be wrapped around a neck/are throat-sized in diameter.

In addition to the loss of attention to what might be called higher things (my vocabulary shrinks daily, much less my capacity for metaphor and abstract thought), I've lost a sense of control over my daily life. One of my main survival tactics in life has been my ability to manage my time, to get a lot done by being ruthlessly efficient about certain tasks, especially work. Now I have no idea how long it will take me to get dressed, because someone might be crying outside the bathroom door and someone else might have had a nosebleed/a nightmare/an accident on any given morning. So, I don't have that anymore, and while the typical moral of the story might be "and everything is so much better because I've learned to embrace uncertainty and live in the moment!," the truth is that in some ways, it has introduced a level of stress and anxiety into daily life, like each day is a special challenge, a game that I have to master to move on to the next level (which is simply the next day).

So, I haven't yet learned how to relax into the chaos, especially with both Sam and me having jobs that we do want to be good at and that require a lot of personal investment.

But there is one thing that I've learned that helps me order the thousands of small decisions involved in parenting and balancing parenting with everything else. And I think it's my favorite of the things I've learned in the last four years (at least, my favorite that didn't come from the girls themselves).

I've generally been a person who is very respectful of authority. As a kid, I rarely disobeyed at home or in school; as a student and later an employee, I've cultivated gold stars and good reviews. So as a parent, I wanted to do things in according to the best, most reasonable advice and most persuasive research about parenting. Nerdy, I know. This made for a rather confusing set of principles to navigate by, like trying to steer in the midst of wind coming at me from all different directions. One of the things that vaguely haunted me was that my parents, I think, believe that modern parents are too uptight and worry too much, which meant that on top of making all the right decisions, I wanted to do so without being hyper-protective, anxious, or controlling. Then one day, I felt a thought break into my consciousness in a way that I know, for me, as the way God speaks to me, and it was "You don't have to answer to your parents; you have to answer to your children."

I don't mean that my children are my boss, but that the test of my parenting is whether my children, when they are grown, will have been well served by what I do for and with them. My elder daughter is way more strong-willed than I ever was, and she possesses more confidence at three than I had at thirty. I would have been terrified to defy or argue with my parents the way she does on a daily basis, and I've been embarrassed by her public tantrums more times than I care to remember. Part of me is tempted to believe that her behavior--her performance of the role of respectful child--proves whether I'm a good parent, and that same part of me wants to just enforce her obedience, to win. But I'm learning, I think, that I've been entrusted with her not so that I can break her will, but so that I can teach her to master her will so that she is not mastered by it. When she is a grown woman, I want her to have learned self-control, and that hard, hard lesson might not be best learned by her doing what I want because she's afraid of what I'll do. She might need to learn to love what is right by failing sometimes, and I might have to let her.

And my younger daughter is quite different. I wouldn't say she's fragile, but she's clearly pretty sensitive. One harsh word in her direction (even if not intended for her) and the corners of her mouth are turned down, lower lip out and quivering, big eyes brimming. I could make her behave pretty easily. But as with Allison Clare, what I want most is not for her to prove that I'm a good mother, but for her to become the person she's meant to be. I think for Gillian, that means she needs abundant encouragement. It's almost counterintuitive because she actually doesn't seem like she needs much at all--she'll happily play by herself for long periods of time, rummaging through cabinets and toting bags of rice around and "reading" books by turning the pages and telling herself the stories as she remembers them. It would be easy to just let her go. But she also lights up when you enter into her play, and one of her favorite phrases right now is, ". . . and me too!" You can say anything--"Allison Clare has school tomorrow" or "I need to remember to take out the trash"--and if Gillian is nearby, she'll look up and chirp, ". . . and me too!" She loves to be included. I don't want to overlook her little desires simply because they're mildly expressed, and I want her to have the joy of knowing how much we are honored to be part of the imaginary world she plays in so much of the time.

So that is what I've learned. Pretty much just the one thing. Lots of corollary lessons--such as, I regret nearly every appalled judgment I ever rendered on a parent I'd witnessed in public, and I also believe that much more of personality is unchangeable. But mostly only the one lesson, the instruction that the audience for my parenting is my girls' older selves. Who knows what scenes they'll remember?