The Girls
The girls are a blur of flying golden locks these days. Feet, fingers, elbows in the air. Heads bashing into the couch. Bodies rolling on the ground. Ask five-year old Tee to come sit next to you, and she dives head-first into the sofa. Ask her about something in a picture book, and she points with her foot. Their bodies are in constant motion - bodies of which they don't yet understand their weight or strength. Her younger sister C-Bear steps squarely onto your foot to get a better look at something with all 35 lbs of her weight. She barrels towards you like a runaway 18-wheeler, and is surprised when the collision topples you over. Tee stands on a chair and grasps at a balloon that's twenty feet above, and doesn't get why you can't reach it either.
At three, and five and a half, everything is physical. Chairs are for climbing onto. Countertops are for hanging from. Rugs are for umbling on. Just being around them becomes a physical experience. Sit on the couch, and risk getting a heel in your face. Sit at dinner and someone will try putting their foot on your leg. Propping your legs up on the coffeetable is an invitation for someone to climb on top, and they cackle as they collapse with your legs onto the floor. A jam-smeared face will ultimately burrow its way into your clean white shirt if its not wiped off immediately. Laying down is riskiest - your body might be prodded with a toy shot, while someone snakes a stethoscope up your shirt. Are you sure you don't need your hair done? Have a seat on the couch. Our girls do a fabulous frizz-out.
Even the quiet moments are physically taxing. Tee leans in to tell a secret, and it's full contact lips to ear. It's the loudest whisper you've ever heard - so loud that you can't understand a word of what she's saying. It just sounds like "HFFFSHHHSSHHFFFTT" with a free spritz of spit in your ear.
Small people have big feelings. A banana cut the wrong way sends C-Bear flying off the chair onto the ground, as she wails with grief. On the contrary, the news of a party sends Tee into a happy frenzy of leaping, twirling, rolling, punching the air and shaking her sister by the shoulders. A few months ago, Tee sobbed mournfully for a full 20 minutes in the car after I picked her up from school because it wasn't her birthday. Yes, it WASN'T her birthday. Someone else got muffins and a special bouquet that day, "and I got NOTHING!" she wailed. C-Bear was inconsolable a few days later because ice was melting in her hand. "I DON'T WANT IT TO MELT!" Explaining that all ice melts was of no use.
A house with a three and five year old means a lot of pretending.
"We're working in a restaurant, RIGHT C-BEAR?" Tee will say. That's usually how these long, elaborate pretend-sessions begin. They pretend to be chefs, bus drivers, balloon salespeople, circus performers, car washers, cashiers, plane passengers. I tiptoe around them, busy myself with my chores, being careful not to break the spell. It's like hitting the jackpot when the spell happens -- a couple of hours to get things done without any questions to answer, things to get, or conflicts to help resolve. The other day, they played "Rainbow School" in their room while I made a beef stew. Heavenly.
They work hard - mixing, digging, stacking, sorting, dumping, picking, combing, cutting, ordering, drawing, cooking, plating, balancing, collecting. It's hard work being a kid.
They have social skills like cavemen. C-Bear will sing in the car, and Tee will ask her to stop. C-Bear pauses for a moment, then starts singing again. Tee responds by screaming unintelligibly at the top of her lungs. Then the kicking begins. Then the howling. I'm a broken record, reminding small people to "use kind words," "ask nicely," "use gentle hands" and " use words not bodies" all day long. I keep telling myself it will happen..
Children are like the reverse of alien-births in movies. Instead of a small creature springing forth from a human, you wait for the day a real-life human being emerges from these savage little monsters' bodies.
C-Bear’s current obsession is scissors. A snip here, a snip there. It's like she's making coleslaw out of 8.5x11 bond paper. She chatters to herself happily. She wanders dreamily to class, filling up her pockets with acorns along the way. Children at this age are small trash collectors with big ideas. I felt something poking around in her mitten the other day, and found a three-inch shard of glass. A "gemstone," she called it.
Things worry her - like witches, and dark closets. The sight of a smoking toaster makes her cry. She loves to sing, and spends much of her day crooning and belting out made-up songs, much of it a cross between gibberish and fake Chinese. She prattles on knowledgeably about the cause of headaches, and how a boy in her class takes a helicopter to school each day. (He doesn't.) She clings onto my pants pockets when she's feeling insecure, and whispers shyly when she needs to pee. She loves physical contact of any kind -- cuddling, nuzzling, kisses, hugs. Given her recent bout of extra-clinginess, we've invented a new game where I hold her tight and say "don't go! don't go!" She laughs and pretends that she has somewhere to go, but then agrees to stay. Either that, or she says she'll be back, and pats my hand telling me that everything will be ok.
When C-Bear is sad, she pouts, fists clench, toes turn in, and she clams up. If it's really bad, her lips part silently for a few seconds before letting loose a mournful, rough wail. She knows what she wants these days, and even more clearly, what she doesn't want. A slice of cheese on her egg sandwich unravels her. A favorite jacket in the wash sends her down into a five-point star on the mudroom floor. That's what happens at three. They start to discover that they're not a part of you anymore. She has her own feelings, her own opinions, her own body, her own mind. The OCD Threes, I call them. Tee at five has finally come off that crazy train, and now C-Bear is just hopping on.
Tee is all arms, legs, feet these days. She's headstands. Somersaults. Jumping jacks. Cartwheels. She's a ninja on the monkey bars.
Then, suddenly she's still. She's on her knees, beading a necklace. Coloring a picture. Inspecting a bug on the windowsill. She operates at 11 at all times. She makes growling faces at you when she's angry, flashing a claw like she's in CATS. She squeals and jumps in the air when she's happy, throwing her entire body over a sofa, legs akimbo. When she's upset, she becomes silent, curls up in a ball and hides under a scarf. She's part sprite, part tiger, part-armadillo. She has sudden moments of maturity and generosity, but the next minute she's wailing because her sister got a bigger mango slice than she did.
Being Tee's mother is less a physical job than it used to be. She picks out her own clothes, gets herself dressed, brushes her own teeth (sort of), goes where I need her to go, and stays put where I ask her to stay. She listens, and at her best moments, is actually really sensible and helpful. She reminds me that I've left a bag, fetches things for the baby, and busily wipes down the tables and chairs when asked. I find myself answering more questions these days — what does something mean, why did that man do that, what does that sign say? It's like a veil has been lifted, and she's finally awake to the world around her. She hears everything you say and sees everything you do. I answer questions simply, and try not say too much. But even with this, I see her go silent and the wheels turn as she processes what I've said. Her eyes and mind work at paparazzi speed, taking pictures, recording, and making sense of the world around her.
I walk more these days with one girl in each hand. We do this through a parking lot, up the stairs to bath time, down the path to school. And when we do, I realize that this alone is a milestone. We're starting to walk through life side by side now. First they're inside you, then they're on you, then they're in front of you, then for a short time they're trailing behind you. But finally they're next to you, and you're walking side-by-side. They're much lower down it's true, but they're next to you. Experiencing things at the same time you are.