Seriously, It's My Best Work

Son produced a large but fairly crumpled art project with a flourish this morning, and used two hands to smooth it out on the table. "See what I made at Kindergarten the other day?" he asked proudly. "It's a tree." It was indeed a tree, and I exclaimed appropriately over it. "It's a little squooshed because it was in my backpack," he explained.

Even though it wouldn't lay flat, it was impressively large. He'd taken two 7x10 pieces of green construction paper and glued them together along their short ends to form a long rectangle of green. Then he fringed the sides of the green, added multiple stems of brown paper artfully overlapped to form a trunk and branches, and glued on cut-outs of fall leaves. The leaves were clearly photocopies provided by the school, which prompted me to ask of the giant project, "Was making this tree your own idea, or did they give you directions?"

"Oh, I did it all by myself. No one telled me how. I thought of it, and then I made it." He looked up at me smiling, "Seriously," he said (in a quite serious voice), "it's my best work."

I could not control my laughter.

"SERIOUSLY," he repeated, somewhat sternly. "It IS. I mean it."

"I know, Sweetie," I told him, choking back the remaining giggles. "It is certainly your best work."

* * * * *

At the doctor's office getting flu shots, the kids of course ended up with lollipops. "I finished mine in two bites," announced Son from the back seat of the car on the way home. "And when we get home, I'm going to plant the lolly stick. And it will grow into a lolly tree, and then I can have lollies whenever I want!"

* * * * *

After Sons gets on the school bus, Daughter and I go upstairs.

"Mama, dance with me," she says. "Do you want to practice our pirouettes?" She starts her very first "ballerina class" on Friday but has learned this lovely word from watching Max and Ruby, and she is ready for anything. So I get up and we begin to dance.

"But wait. We need music," she announces, stopping. I spend two minutes poking around online and find a Detroit radio station that streams classical music.

And we dance.

Her arms are surprisingly graceful and she sways and points her toes and jumps and tries to spin. I teach her First Position with her feet. And then Second. And Third. We try little leaps. We pretend we know how to do an arabesque. The music swells and we spin some more. Her feet are joyful. My heart is light.

There is, I think, no better way to spend a chilly, grey fall afternoon than dancing blithely around in one's brand-new, very first pair of ballet slippers and the loudest striped-and-flowered tights one owns.


* * * * *

There is something magical about these two afternoons each week that Son is away at school and I am home with Daughter. It is the first time in our lives that we have had each other to ourselves on any regular basis. We do not always do whimsical things. Sometimes we go grocery shopping or run errands. Sometimes we go to the park. Sometimes we scrub bathrooms. Always we have a prolonged story time. And always, we are together, just the two of us.

These last few weeks have made me appreciate so very much how important it is to make the time for focused attention when one has more than one child. As he is learning to read, mastering graphs, learning how to measure volume, she is growing in confidence, skipping through her days, leaving me with treasured memories of her loving heart and constantly flitting feet. She may grow up to be a dancer or a lawyer; he may be an artist or a scientist. But either way, they are growing in ways I could scarcely dream of, and in directions that make me delight in each new day.

Seriously. My children? They're my very best work. Even though I only deserve partial credit for what they are becoming.