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SOCIAL MEDIA


I press play and she leans into my chest. I can feel her smiling because I’m smiling, too.  She’s currently in a Trolls phase and we watch the movie once a day, at least, and we blast the soundtrack whenever we’re in the car. Voices of celebrities I practically grew up with surround us; they’re new and exciting for her yet familiar and nostalgic for me. The songs takeover and we’re both singing along.

You with the sad eyes...

Small creatures with crazy hair dance and talk on screen and she jumps up to join them, acting out her favorite parts. She’s memorized their actions and words and recites them all. The scene ends and she crawls back into my lap tucking her arms into my chest, careful not to spill the popcorn, and she leans her little head on my shoulder. “Shhh,” she says. I’m still singing without even realizing it.

Don’t be discouraged, oh I realize, it’s hard to take courage...

She tells me a story about someone bossing her around on the playground and I listen, torn between thoughts of disapproving and accepting, necessary evils. She’s a bit bossy herself so while I would never want someone to walk all over her, we all grow from challenges and it could be a good thing to not get her way from everyone she meets. Sometimes it's okay to take a step back if only to see the best path to take moving forward.

In a world full of people, you can lose sight of it all...

She says she didn’t say anything when it happened but made a note that next time she wanted to choose the game. Fair is fair. Then she told me another story when she said something to a friend that wasn’t very nice and when questioned about it, she cried. “It felt wrong and I knew I shouldn't have said it,” she admitted, practically growing up between her words. Tears formed in her eyes at the recollection. Tears formed in my own at the realization.

The darkness inside you can make you feel so small...

She said she apologized afterwards and I let her know that’s often the hardest part. The admitting and acknowledging and accepting and apologizing, it doesn’t get easier. It’s best to learn that lesson now because it’s one she’ll reference over and over again. We talked about her inner voice and the feeling she gets when she listens to it versus when she ignores it, happiness versus guilt.

I see your true colors shining through...

The troll with the pink hair talks about getting back up again after she falls and facing fear and chasing dreams, Poppy is Madison’s favorite. Madison is my favorite. We watch a town full of evil give in to joy and see a troll full of sadness laugh again. I watch her skin thicken and her heart soften. The animated characters warn her that the world makes you crazy, they tell her to just call me up because I'll always be there. It's true, I remind her of the same.

I see your true colors and that's why I love you...

The credits roll and she asks to dance along as she always does. We twist and turn in the middle of our living room. We're both off beat and she's standing on my toes, but our laughs drown out the music so it all seems right in the moment. I pick her up, holding her like the baby she once was, and I spin around quickly so her hair fans out above her head like a troll's. I can feel her smiling because I'm smiling, too.

Don't be afraid to let them show... your true colors are beautiful.


TRUE COLORS

April 26, 2017




I took another step and then another as I felt the grass give in beneath my feet. I heard her tiny steps behind me, whispering short phrases, interrupting the conversation she sparked along the way. We talked and laughed and when I stopped, she stopped. I looked back and saw her standing in the prints my boots made. Her foot filling only a portion of my own. How could something so small seem so big?

“Keep walking,” she said. “I’ll keep following you.”

Sometimes it hits me, the pressure of parenting is intense. The responsibility can be crushing, it’s heavy and consuming. The constant thinking and overthinking of every decision and the never-ending thoughts that you have no idea what you’re doing seem to define more days than not. You live in fear of consequences should you do this instead of that and ask yourself repeatedly: what happens if I mess up.

What happens if I mess her up?

Keep walking, I’ve learned. The path somehow reveals itself after every step, it appears and catches your feet and memorizes your prints. The road is paved as you go because every journey is different and no one has walked this way, your way, before now. Until now. Some will try to convince you otherwise, they've been where you are, but lanes can run parallel without being the same. 

“Daddy?” she asked a few minutes later. “Can you slow down?”

I looked behind me and realized my strides were wider than hers and her tiny footprints were dotting my own with another one in between. Her path. The road is paved as you go, every journey is different. While she’s following my example, she’s creating her own version of the rules in the process. While she’s listening and learning, catching life lessons as I throw them over my shoulder, she’s finding her own way.

I stopped. She stopped.

We faced each other because sometimes you can’t see what lies ahead unless you’re willing to look behind you. She stepped on my toes like she did when she was smaller and we danced. She slid off and climbed back on between steps and everything disappeared, the path and the doubts and the pressure, as my feet carried hers in circles and sways. The grass made every effort to capture our prints, but they were mixed together and flattened. Messy.

What happens if I mess up?

She stepped off my feet and her toes faced my own. We looked around and noticed the prints were different, our paths changed. Some of her lighter impressions were leading while my heavier steps were following. Some of her prints were inside mine and others beside. Some were going in opposite directions and some, my favorites, were toe to toe; challenging and rewarding. Parenting, a path worth paving.

 “Just keep walking,” she said and the grass gives in under each step.

TOE TO TOE

April 19, 2017






I turned the burner down and let dinner simmer while she grabbed oranges from the fruit bowl and moved them around the table. She assembled them in a specific order then sat back admiring her work. I knew it was coming, the problem, I was waiting for it. This is a regular scene in our home, arranging objects then building math problems around them.

“Okay...” she started. 

I knew it.

“I have 8 oranges, but you take 2 with you to work for a snack. How many do I have left?”

She rolls two oranges in my direction and rearranges those left in front of her, her tiny palms barely fitting around them. Then she looks up at me equal parts curious and impatient. Before we count them, she throws a curveball.

“Wait! Mama didn’t realize you already had some so she set aside 2 more for you. How many do I have left now?”

She sat back, proud of herself, and crossed her arms. We walked through the scenario even though she knew the answer before she asked the question. I walked back towards the stove while she gathered all the oranges to set up another equation.

It’s easy to timestamp the beginning. As soon as she was born her mother and I have been teaching her things. It’s easy to see when it started, but what becomes difficult to pinpoint is the transition of material. When did we stop referencing noises when referring to animals and start explaining their habitats? When did she stop waiting for us to feed her and start preparing her own snacks from the pantry? Was there an overlap? There had to be, right?

She has a notebook that she’s been writing her own word problems in; a collection of random math stories and equations using names of family members and fellow classmates. Her little voice attempts to grow louder echoing down the stairs and through the hall asking me to spell a certain word. 

“Daddy, spell shoestrings!” 

I throw the letters back to her one by one. Once she’s written an entire word problem, she clicks her pen signaling she’s done and we read over it together. Sometimes she crawls in my lap with the little notebook full of her 5 year old handwriting and we solve every problem she comes up with. 

I hope that never changes, the problem solving and the trust it takes to bring them to me. Maybe I’ll be more aware of the transition going forward, when the math problems evolve from addition and subtraction to finding out what X is. There’s an overlap, right? There has to be.

I turn the burner off and yell that dinner is ready even though we’re all in the same room already. It’s her mother’s turn, oranges roll into place on the table. Charlie yawns and stretches as the food crosses overhead; I grab plates and utensils and watch them work out the details. She writes this one down.

“Daddy has 8 oranges, but 3 have gone bad so we throw them away. I take one to school and Charlie takes the rest because he thinks they’re toys. What is Daddy left with?”

Click. She clicks her green pen and sets it down.

I sit beside them at the table, each in our own seat designated by habit alone. Charlie moves to squeeze under Madison’s chair, a four legged crumb catcher. My daughter smiles at me. They answer the question together. Nothing. All the oranges are gone so I have nothing left, they agree. But they’re wrong. I have them and that's everything.

Click. Sometimes you have to spell out your problems to find the answer.

CLICK

April 12, 2017

I have a running list of comments, phrases, and one liners from Madison that I keep in my phone. I started collecting them when she started talking because almost as soon as she said something that had me laughing hysterically, she said something else funny that made me forget it entirely. I'm not sure if these are amusing to anyone else or just my wife, Allison, and me since we're her parents, but I have a feeling we'll look back one day enjoying that we captured some of her random comments (click here for more).




MADISON:  You know what?
ME:  What?
MADISON:  Everything is better with sugar and candy.
ME:  Yep. Except too much is bad for your teeth.
MADISON:  Wow. Every party has a pooper.

--

While eating cotton candy...
MADISON:  Is this fabric? It tastes like fabric.

--

MADISON:  What are we having for dinner?
ME:  I don't know.
MADISON:  I'll ask Mama, you know she knows everything.

--

Picks up her Buzz Lightyear toy and runs around...
MADISON:  To Bed, Bath, and Beyond!

--

MADISON:  You know what my favorite color is?
ME:  Purple.
MADISON:  Nope. Rainbow.
ME:  Rainbow isn't a color though.
MADISON:  Yes, it is. It's ALL the colors.


CHATTY PATTY, VOL. 28

April 5, 2017

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