No surprise to hit a Friday morning and find that the focused beginning of the week has unraveled into a chaotic tangle; I guess that’s what this corridor between Thanksgiving and the winter holidays does. So, that’s where I am, in a tangle.
For a potluck that commences this overly busy weekend ahead, I made a small pot of soup. Soup also is where I am, a bit mushy and tossed together, stirred up, and then sitting or setting until the flavor becomes itself. Soup on the taste when you make it isn’t the soup; time makes the soup the soup.
That is a good metaphor for this particular moment as parent: the importance of letting the kid sit (and even stew), the belief in settling into what’s hard or happy or just… is. I am cryptic here but I can offer a tiny example of this, perhaps to give me a little faith. A year ago, Saskia was not only cute but a hitter and a biter. She has had to work on it—and she’s worked on it. Wednesday morning when Addy had something she wanted that was hers, Saskia hit Addy.
I was right there, scooped her up and brought her to the couch. “Stop holding me!” she screeched.
I’m calmly intoning the line about how you don’t hurt your friends. I’m firmly but calmly intoning that line. “Stop holding me!”
I did. She told me, “It’s mine!” She did not writhe or hit.
I responded, “I know, but maybe you can share it. Even if you don’t want her to hold it, you can’t hit your friend.”
We returned to Addy. “Sorry,” said Saskia.
Within ten seconds one or both of them was the mom and off they went, conflict-free for a while.
It seems so small, not hitting me on my lap, saying she was sorry to her friend. It’s so not small.
I’m going to remember the soupiness that got us to that moment when I could recognize how far she’s come.
**
This was my first pot of soup of the season and I’m not sure what I’m going to think of it. I used what was left on the counter and in the fridge so it wasn’t quite the “usual” and there is a kind of methodical method to my soup. That’s to say I pretty much make the same exact but not exactly the same soup all season long. Here at the beginning of the season, I have to get my soup making muscles back into shape.
I hopped over to Momalom to do a guest post about how perhaps it’s true that you can’t do right by the first child (or the first soup?). Hop over. Or click. I don’t think you can walk or skip in cyberspace but perhaps I’m wrong.
