Parents:  How often do you stop and really look at your child?

“What do you mean?” I hear you ask.   “I’m looking at them ALL THE TIME.    Gotta.   They’d shave the cat with a Brillo pad, spray paint the dog bright pink, and completely disassemble the DVD player in a few minutes if I didn’t.”

One of the big problems with being a parent is that far too often we — myself included — get stuck deep into our, “parenting mode”, and although we’re looking AT our children, we’re not really looking at them.   We’re actually looking past them — we’re watching their behavior, checking for signs of distress, eyeing out potential hazards, or trying desperately to stay one step ahead of their crafty little minds and anticipate what next thing they will find amusing that you certainly will not.

Other times, when we know are kids are in a safe place, we have a tendency to tune them out.    How many times have you said, “That’s wonderful, dear,” as you glaze off at the TV program you’re watching and Junior is trying to show you his crayon drawing for the 14th time?    Guilty!   And hey, I get it; kids can’t — and shouldn’t — get 100% of our concentration 100% of the time.   They’ll manage and survive fine if we don’t coo wildly over every single thing they do or jump to their every whim.

The problem comes when we fail to come back out of our parenting or zone-out mode and recognize what is truly in front of us — and how amazing, wonderful, and unique it is.    And what a privilege we have been given at getting to be so involved in it.

Keston was playing on my lap the other night and he was in a mood to be a bit snuggly and close so we were sitting face-to-face as he talked to me and played with my face and beard.    At first I found myself gazing past him as I talked to my wife and checked out the TV and so forth, and then suddenly, I stopped.

My eyes — and more importantly, my mind — switched focus to concentrate on him.    Looking deep into those eyes like I used to all the time when he was first born, noting the expressions and thoughts behind those liquid windows.    He was suddenly quiet and gazed right back at me, a curious expression on his face as he tried to figure out what I was doing.  My eyes played over the delicate features of his face, eyelashes, cheeks, nose, noting all the while the perfection and beauty in each of them.    All at the same time, feeling and allowing myself to recognize and savor the emotions of connection and happiness and protectiveness and pride that swelled up inside of me when I really stopped to look.

The cliché about kids growing up too fast is all too real, raw, and frightening once you become a parent.   He’s only three and already I look back on pictures from his earlier years and go, “Was he THAT small?  He looked like THAT!?  I don’t remember!”   I don’t want to be one of those parents that suddenly gets a clearing of their vision about the time their child turns 14 and goes, “Who are you, where did you come from, and are you going to do your laundry anytime soon??”

So, I’m going to try my hardest to stop and look more.   To savor what I can and capture as much as I am able.   To parent when I must, but to avoid the trap of familiarity.   To really look.

I hope I never fail to see him.

The other night I sat down with my 2-year-old son at his little half-height table and cracked open a brightly-colored four-pack of Play-Doh.  As the lid came off of the first can to reveal the cylinder of raw creativity within, the familiar scent of the popular toy caressed my memories like a favorite old sweater.   Even being probably 20-odd years since I’ve played with it, the smell and feel seemed to be the same as it was back then when I was younger, smaller, and less on my mind.

I shook the blob out of the can and into my hands and then worked it up a bit before gently laying it out in front of my son.  “Touch it,” I urged him, smiling as I watched him press a finger into it.  For the first time he connected with an extremely classic toy as a complete newcomer — and I think he was instantly hooked.

As we pressed out shapes with cookie cutters, smashed the Play-Doh with our palms, pressed out our handprints, curled “snakes”, and rolled balls to make snowmen of unrealistic colors, I reveled in the simplicity of our playtime.   Like other classic toys — blocks, Crayons, puzzles — Play-Doh is only a barebones medium for what your mind can envision; it is still up to you to create something from the shapeless mass.

In some fashions, the ability to take a material like Play-Doh and shape it into anything at all is analogous to our abilities in life.    The situations, people, and opportunities we face every day are very often shapeless forms; how we perceive them, interact with them, influence them, and build them into something else determines how we function and where we go.

This doesn’t always apply, of course — life is also full of cookie-cutters.     They are the forces that shape and pre-define limits and boundaries to the events we interact with.    This can be problematic; we may have a star-shaped hole to fill and can only find a rectangle piece; we try to massage it into the right shape, but we may very well end up with a shapeless mass that is even worse than useless.

There is at least one property of Play-Doh that we do not, unfortunately, get very often — the ability to SMASH.   Create a crappy-looking car out of dough?   Grab it in both hands and squish it back into a lump from which can emerge something new.    Screw up and blow the job interview?   They look poorly upon people smashing their offices in an attempt to change the situation.    Time does not take well to do-overs.

Three hours later we finally packed up the Play-Doh into its cans and put all the cutters away.   Keston cried when we finally put it away, saying that he wanted to keep playing with it.   I explained that it was late; we really needed to put it away, go to bed, and get some sleep, but maybe we could play more tomorrow?    He was thoroughly convinced that this was the prime time to be playing, but we eventually got him redirected and back to a happy mood for a trip upstairs to bed.

I wonder what he thought about this first experience with being able to make something out of practically nothing; of directing his own input into an unbounded matter.    Did he feel empowered by the ability to make whatever he liked of the situation?   Scared to have a lack of definition and instruction on what to do?  Or did he find it amazing to make a mistake and then to simply — erase it?

It will be years before he makes these same associations and analogies, but as we fell asleep that night, I hoped that he will always find in himself the ability to create, to change, to influence, and to shape the world and his reality to a new and better day.    If he’s lucky, that will occasionally include yellow cans of squishy-soft blobs in bright colors and a familiar smell that will always bring him home.

My dear Keston,

I was up very late last night (it was a Hallowed Eve, after all), long after you and Mummy had gone to bed to prepare the house for your birthday party today.   I was deep in the middle of washing the floors and was idly rinsing the soiled mop when I was suddenly overcome and nearly burst into tears standing there over the sink of dirty, grey water.    I don’t know why it suddenly hit me, but I was going to have a 2-year-old boy the next day and it suddenly rushed in on me.    It’s not like I didn’t have warning, of course…your mum and I have been hard at work preparing for this day for some weeks if not months, but…I guess I suddenly stopped to think about it.    Something as mind-numbing as mopping will do that to you.

Two years old — a whole 730 days gone by where you have been in my life, spicing it up, making me both laugh my ass off and pull my hair out, where my heart has seemingly both grown 50 times its size and I have found a wellspring of joy and happiness that — well, frankly, I’m a sour old man — I didn’t think existed in this world anymore.

And yet, there you are, day in and day out, excitedly running up to me with a, “Daddy!   Daddy!” and then your usual string of words and babble as you struggle to bring me up to speed and take me in to play on the floor with you and your trains.    Or as we’re wrestling and rolling around on the floor and we’ll stop and look each other in the eyes and you’ll push your nose in for an Eskimo kiss.     Or how you stand there on your stool, intent on being right there as my kitchen helper, partly because you want to know what I’m doing and your curiosity is almost boundless, but mostly because I’m there, and if being on a stool in a kitchen means being close to me, then you’re happy.    And so am I.

Two years ago by now we were probably hanging out in the recovery room, cooing over you wrapped tightly in a bundle and wondering what was coming next and marveling that we were now at the end of one part of the journey whilst simultaneously starting in on a much larger, unexplored one.    I think at that point my heart was so torn in different directions that I didn’t know what to think of the entire experience and now…well, I couldn’t have imagined where we’ve been so far.    I’m really excited to see where we’re going next.

I find it difficult to express into words exactly how much you consume me every day and how much I enjoy that feeling, no matter how difficult it sometimes is or how much it taxes my mind.   You are that which I think of first every morning and the person I think of every night before I fall asleep.    For nobody else do I awaken at 4:30 in the morning and get out of bed just to hover quietly by your crib to make sure you are still breathing, and safe, and warm.     Everything I do when I’m around you has some Keston-content within, whether it’s watching out to make sure you don’t get hurt, wondering how you’ll figured into plans, or simply wondering what you’re up to and what you’re thinking.

I feel like your 2nd year of hanging around this blue-green ball will be an exciting, pivotal one, as you are now getting to the point of being able to really communicate, to put words into complex sentences, to have enough vocabulary to really express yourself, and we are already starting to have some cute little conversations.    You get this big huge grin of satisfaction on your face when you say something, ending in a question, I say it back and give you an answer, and you smile huge as you say enthusiastically, “YES!”   I think you realize that we’re really starting to make some progress on this speaking-thing and within short time, we’ll really be able to pass around information and be on the same page.

I look forward to it, because if nothing else, you’ve taught me that there’s always something more about you that I want to know, and I want to understand what’s behind those dancing baby blue eyes of yours, your funny facial expressions, eyebrow lifts, and hands tossed up in a shrug while a stream of half-words come out your mouth.    And some day, when you’ve progressed far enough and understand a whole lot more, you’ll be able to read what I’ve written here and know how very much your daddy loves you and how he can’t wait to be your daddy this next year — decade — century — FOREVER.

I love you so very much, my big beautiful boy.   A very happy 2nd birthday to you.

Love,

Daddy

I have obtained for myself a regular little helper, a little guy who’s always around when I’m trying to get supper going or dishes washed at night before settling down for a good game of trains.   Once lured by the sweet serenades of PBS kids’ shows, he now finds himself irresistably drawn to the kitchen and the perch ontop of his little red stool, watching intently everything that happens and commenting on it all the while.

We were so engaged the other night as I worked up a batch of Grandma Farwell’s Hearty Split Pea Soup, one of those soul foods that is perfect on a colder night and brings back memories of a small slice of something homey in the strangeness that was four years of college.  Keston had assumed his normal place on his stool at my side, watching intently as I whittled away at the various ingredients and explained them out loud, which he would repeat.

And so we put peas (peeees), a ham bone (meaties), chopped onion (on-on), and carrots (care-rot) into the crockpot along with some water.   Then I opened the spice cupboard and pulled out a bay leaf and some thyme.    I looked over and he had a very concerned look on his face.   He looked up at me.

“Leafs?”

I laughed.     “Yeah, buddy, they’re special leaves called, ‘spices’.   They make things taste good.”

“Daddy….leafs???”   His confusion was pretty clear that he couldn’t figure out why I was putting leaves into our food.   I thought for a moment.

“Well, they smell good,” I explained.    This brought from him a wuffing noise as he pulsed air through his nose.    He has always smelled so good (babies, toddlers, parents, you know what I mean) and so sometimes for a goof we go and rapidly sniff him on his cheeks and neck which usually gets a peal of giggles out of him.   “Right!”  I said.

I proceeded to get down the container of cinnamon.       “Here, Kes, smell this.”  I showed him by sniffing it first with the same whuffing action and then I stuck it under his nose.

He gave it a shot.    “Mmmmmm!!” he smiled and hummed afterwards.     We then tried several others — basil, dried onion, parsley, thyme, and salt, just because I wanted to show him that they didn’t ALL smell.     He clearly liked some and was turned away by others, but it was a cute and interesting educational exercise.

We got done with that and I stirred everything together in the crockpot before putting it in the base and turning it on for a long, slow simmer.    “Seeee!    Seeee!”    I get interrupted about 300 times every night cooking because his vantage point from the stool isn’t enough and he wants a better look.    So, I hoist him up in my arms and he leans way over and gives the stew a long, hard, investigative gaze.

He turns back to me and points.     “Daddy….LEAFS!?”

Emeril, eat your heart out.

Despite the weather being a bit odd this year in Iowa, having an unusually cool summer and weird rain patterns, it seems to have fit the pumpkin vines’ preferences perfectly, as my father was able to raise a bumper crop of the beautiful orange fruit this year.    This prompted us to take our son Keston over to his grandfather’s place to paw through the many different offerings and pick the biggest and best of the bunch.   Aunt Katy came along for the fun, too, because really — she’s just a kid at heart.

Although it was near sunset and the wind was blowing around 75mph, the lighting was perfect and the conditions certainly didn’t deter Keston from trying to choose every single pumpkin in the patch as his own.