My 100 Days of Joy have been spread thin over the last few weeks due to the end-of-the-school-year craziness and now my inability to concentrate as Huckle and Sally adjust to The Unscheduled Life. Oh, all year they long for lazy summer days, but when those days first come, it's "Mom? Mom? Mom? Mom?" until they remember all the things they wanted spare time to do. Right now Sally is buried in a Hardy Boys mystery (she reads the beginning and the end; not sure if she then skips back to hit the middle or just moves on to the next book) and Huckle is sewing a pouch. I won't be surprised if they've switched in half an hour.
All this "Mom? Mom? Mom?" disrupts the solitude on which a big chunk of my joy is built, and so I am seeking other forms of joy. Today it's conversation with Huckle and Sally. Their conversation styles and topics differ tremendously. It gives me joy to interact with each in their own way.
Seven-year-old Sally is a quiet one. She thinks long and hard before bringing up a topic on her own. She is more likely to disappears into her room to play stuffed animals or quietly work on a craft at her desk than to seek me out for a talk. She's a solitude-seeker, like me. But when Sally does open up -- on her own time and on her own topic -- I love to hear her thoughts. She has studied her friends and classmates to know what they like and how they think. She has opinions about playground rules and kids who tease. She has a strong sense of justice and she often goes against the flow to do the kind thing. She knows who she plans to marry and has been certain since the day she met him two years ago. Sally is an easy companion. (Although she is also a complainer, especially when tired and hungry. We're working on that.)
Huckle is the none-stop motor mouth in our family. Since the day he learned to talk, it sometimes seems as if he hasn't taken a breath. He keeps a running commentary of his every thought, every sight. He is a wonderer. Even when he was two years old, I would stop him now and then and tell him "Mommy's ears need a rest" -- he is that relentless of a talker. At one point Huckle went through a phase when most conversations began with "What would you do if I..." followed by some little kid fantasy about finding a diamond mine in our backyard Digging Spot or inventing a car that ran on grass clippings or flying a plane around the world. Huckle would spend a good 5 or 10 minutes describing his invention or accomplishment and then pursue an answer: he needs a response. And so Husband and I developed a standard answer: "We'd call this newspaper." If that didn't satisfy Huckle, we would go over to the phone, pick it up, pretend to dial, and say, "Hello, newspaper? We just saw the most amazing thing. Our son just..." Huckle would watch us proudly. Afterwards, he would ask, "Did you really call?" We would answer, "No. But if it really happens, you can be sure we'll really call."
Huckle is our talker. Most of our conversations with him are 90% listening, but he doesn't only want us to listen. He needs a response. His love language is engaged conversation. And I appreciate that. I also appreciate knowing what he thinks. Huckle has no secrets -- I know his thoughts on God, on sin, on his own sin. I know his fears and joys. These days, my ears still often need a rest, but I find great joy in Huckle's conversation too, as he grows older. We go deep into controversy and science, politics and religion. Huckle's conversation is tempered with a great curiosity about the world, so he asks good questions and gives thoughtful responses. There is great joy in sharing your worldview with your child.
Huckle also has an incredible memory, which adds to the richness of his conversation. His school practices "narration" the retelling of a story or information. The teacher reads a paragraph and then the students tell back what they heard. Every one of Huckle's teachers has commented on his incredible gift of narration. He doesn't just tell them the gist of the paragraph; he repeats back word-for-word what they said. I didn't think much about it until I came across one of his papers last week on which the teacher had asked the children to write their narration instead of give it orally. He filled the whole page with a word-for-word regurgitation of the text (something informative, like how to make friends) with a few underlined blanks toward the bottom where he couldn't recall a word or two.
I was thinking about conversation while transporting Huckle's classmates to our house for his birthday party last week. In earlier years, the boys have shrieked or made gross noises or any other noisiness when all together in my car. When we reach home (only 10 minutes away), I need an ibuoprofen. But this year, now that they are "mature" ten year olds, they actually had a conversation! It was fun to listen in as they told cat stories, each relating a cat their family once owned, what made that cat interesting, how it was found and how it died. They each were eager to tell their story and yet they took turns and listened to one another. I was impressed! Where were the fart noises? Would we make it home without me needing an ibuprofen? Ah, my son is growing up. There's still Sally's classmates to count on for the noise and headaches.
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