I’ll be seeing you …

In the beginning
When I started writing the Slightly Crunchy Parent in March 2003, I was full of things to say about the choices I had made as a parent. I spent hours and hours researching all of the decisions I made for our family. It is such a large responsibility – I don’t think a person can fully comprehend the pressure and the desire to “do it right” unless they’ve raised kids. We all know what happens to children when parenting goes wrong: years of therapy and unfulfilling adult relationships and neuroses and medications and maybe even jail time. Okay, maybe it’s not that bad. But it feels like it when you’re the mom.

When I was offered the opportunity to write a column I jumped at it. I had done a lot of writing before I had kids, but it slowed down a lot while I carried babies and chased toddlers. Every month, I loved sitting down to vent some of that pent-up creativity. The Slightly Crunchy Parent (or Crunchy P, as we call it in-house) has been a fabulous outlet for the last five-and-a-half years.

During that time, I have talked about some of my best and worst experiences as a mother. More than once, I have found myself crying as I write, re-experiencing some difficulty or triumph. It has also happened that I open the pages of VITAL Source and can hardly remember what I have written. So many times I am in the zone, writing things that were secrets until my fingers hit the keys.

Then and now
Lena is 13; in 2003 she was seven. As a home-schooled second grader, she was right on the cusp of reading and she could whoop some serious backside at pretzel poker. She was a bossy, sassy, sweet master strategist who liked to be glued to my side. She was simultaneously very proud of and very annoyed by her younger siblings and cousins. Her desire to mother and control them was so strong – I felt like I was constantly saying, “Lena, you are NOT the parent!” Lena has been trying to grow up fast since the day she was born. Looking at her now, it seems like she has gotten her wish.

Though she was my fattest baby, she is now a slender young woman with a core of self-confidence that’s hard to rattle. While she still likes to be the boss (very much!), she typically channels it into helping out with her brother and sister and babysitting a lot. For the most part, she has refined her sass into something far more palatable in our family: irreverence. At 13, she obviously still has some pretty mouthy moments (and what is up with the eye rolling?), but we work through it.

In March 2003, Emma was approaching her fourth birthday. That girl has always walked to the beat of her own drum. In manner and nature, she is completely different from her siblings. Emma was already working hard to put her ideas down on paper in the form of elaborate illustrations and paintings. She sang quietly to herself, often narrating her day as it progressed. While she enjoyed playing with Lena and all of the tribe kids, she was never willing to put up with unfavorable conditions just to avoid rocking the boat. She frequently chose to play alone rather than go along with a game she didn’t want to play.

For the most part, this still describes Emma the fifth grader. At the beginning of the school year, she was offered a scholarship from Danceworks to continue her tap dancing classes. She’s positively mad for tap. It’s her second year of violin, too, and she constantly amazes me with her drive to practice and perfect her musical abilities.

Between the beginning and now, though, Emma and I hit a rough patch. The kids’ dad and I separated in 2004 and eventually divorced. We’ve maintained an excellent parenting relationship and the kids have never gone more than a couple days without seeing him. On the surface, Emma seemed to handle the whole thing very well. She continued to do well in school, had friends, went to Brownies and generally behaved. But something was missing between us. It was gone so long, I really believed that she and I just weren’t going to be as close as the other kids, and I mourned that relationship deeply. Then suddenly, about a year ago, things improved. I think she must have finally worked through her really normal anger towards me. And when she was done, it was like the clouds parted and the sun shone on my heart again. I had missed my mini-me so much.

My youngest, Jeffrey, was two. He was still nursing, still sleeping with me, still thought the whole world revolved around the two of us. Physically, Jeffrey was very strong and very coordinated. He could run, kick, throw a ball, jump off high surfaces and injure himself much earlier than the girls. But when he was ready for a cuddle, he was totally my guy.

He’s eight years old now. Still agile and determined, he backs away from no physical challenge. He’s small for his age, able to sneak behind furniture, under beds, into corners and around people milling about. He loves being called on to do things no one else can do. Like Lena, Jeffrey is also a master of strategy. Games like Risk, Stratego and Othello keep him fascinated for hours. Though his teachers regularly tell me that he has poor eye-hand coordination, you’d never know it watch him build Star Wars pocket models or bead bracelets with his sisters.

Wrapping it up and starting anew
As always, I am amazed by my children. They are genuinely kind and generous. They continue to be my greatest teachers. We laugh together, and we cry together when we need to. None of us walks alone. And though, like everyone else, I still doubt my parenting regularly, I am proud of what I’ve done.

This is the last installment – for now, at least – of the Slightly Crunchy Parent. In January, I’ll begin a new column for VITAL. It’s more general, focusing on living in the world with as little damaging impact as possible, facing environmental and even financial challenges as families and individuals. Think of it as “The Slightly Crunchy Parent Goes to Washington,” only told in story form from my dining room table. I’m looking forward to it, and I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as you’ve enjoyed the Crunchy P. VS