|
"Nothing you do for children is ever wasted." When I was a kid, we sat quietly on Sunday morning sometimes for forty of
fifty seconds at a stretch. Fidgety kids were put between two grownups, usually
your parents or sometimes a large aunt. Like tying a boat to a dock. Every time
you moved they'd grab your shoulder and give you a sharp shake and hiss at you,
Sit. Death will be like that. I'll be in bed and think, "Well, I think I'll get
up and live a little," and death will grab me, shake me, say, "Shhh. Be quiet.
Lie still." I used to think about death on Sunday morning. How hard it would be
to lie in your coffin for years with nothing to read, nothing to do, but some
grownups I knew probably could manage quite well.
Some former children returned for Easter, bringing their children with them,
and some children were shipped earlier to spend the week with grandparents, some
of whom are starting to recover to the point where they can sit in a chair and
sit back all the way, not lean forward to jump when they hear the crash. The grandparents
imagined the kiddos leaning against them on the sofa listening to Uncle Wiggily:
they forgot how explosive kids can be. Something in the air sets them off. A kid
can go all day and hardly eat, then the moon shifts and he's eating like a farmhand.
You served baked horse and he eats all of it. Children can lie around for a long
time, then a herd of them bursts in the front door and gallops through the kitchen
and outside. Children are always on the verge of bursting. They burst six, seven
times a day and think nothing of it.
Virginia Ingqvist had two grandkids with her last week, Barbara's two oldest,
Doug and Danielle. Hjalmar worked late at the bank. He loves them, but he knows
his limit, and it's about thirty minutes. One is four and the other five, an age
when you want to find out everything in one day. "Why don't buildings fall?" asked
Doug two minutes after he arrived. "Because," Virginia explained, "because they're
built to stand." "How?"
Thirty seconds, and already she was into architecture, and knew that biology
and astronomy and physics were coming right up. Then theology. "Who's God?" "God
is God." "Yeah, but who?" It's never a subject you know something about, such
as etiquette.
Barbara came up on Friday with her two-year-old and took all three of them
to her friend Ruthie's house to visit. Ruthie has three of her own. Her three
and Barbara's three sniffed each other for a moment and then two cats made the
mistake of coming around the corner of the house into the backyard. The cats realized
it was a mistake and backed away, saying, Uh, sorry, didn't know you were here.
We'll come back later. But the kids grabbed them, hauled them indoors, got them
dressed and into a doll buggy, two little cat children. The cats went limp, waiting
for a chance to break out, which they did -- two cats in full regalia, one up
the tree, one on the garage roof, trying to remove their clothes, five children
in pursuit, and the two-year-old investigating the back porch.
Barbara and Ruthie sat in the yard talking about child rearing. Barbara's
philosophy is more relaxed than her mother's, less restrictive, a hands-off approach,
allowing children freedom to explore and find their own boundaries. As she said
this, she watched the little boy climb the porch steps, stand at the top, turn
around, and when he took a step forward straight out into space, she leaped up
and made a dash for him, too late to catch him, but she almost stepped on his
head. When she scooped him up, she came close to spraining his neck. A major cause
of injury to children is parents rushing to the scene. The panic reflex. Some
children love to scream for the thrill of making immense people move fast. I remember
that, on a quiet day, my sister and I in the backyard wondered, "Where's Mom?"
Upstairs, we thought. So I screamed, "MOM." She made it down in two seconds. A
good pair of wheels for an old lady.
Grandma Tollefson turns off her hearing aid when descendants are around, so
a crash is only a whisper to her, boys thundering around upstairs are a distant
tapping. One afternoon a sound came out of her house like jets taking off, her
grandson practicing his guitar. She was there, knitting, rocking, saying to him,
"You know, there was a boy I knew who played the guitar -- what was his name?
Oh dear. He moved away in 1921, I think. He played his guitar on his porch, and
I sat in our porch and listened. I don't think he knew. The screens were so dark,
and I could hear him so clear, just like I can hear you. I was in love with him
for a whole summer and he didn't know it." Kevin didn't hear a word she said,
and she didn't know the music was blowing her hair back.
Selective ignorance, a cornerstone of child rearing. You don't put kids under
surveillance: it might frighten you. Parents should sit tall in the saddle and
look upon their troops with a noble and benevolent and extremely nearsighted gaze.
The Buehler boy celebrated a birthday last night and ten of his closest friends
came over for a party. They danced to alarming music and ate an alarming amount
of pizza and told alarming jokes and there were periods of alarming dead silence,
which the Buehlers heard from the kitchen, where they remained in quarantine.
They whomped up armloads of chow, and passed it to the their son, who carried
it to his guests. Stayed in the kitchen for five hours, except for one trip to
the bathroom, averting thier eyes, and the mister snuck up the front once to have
a look, and when he looked he wished he hadn't. He was dying of curiosity. the
party was so quiet and then burst into laugher, and then silence and then whispering
and screams of laughter. He tiptoed down the hall and peeked and saw they were
huddled over the Buehlers' wedding album. Nineteen fifty-nine was a funnier year
than he had realized and he was a little hurt. He was quite handsome then in those
half-rim glasses, his hair carefully oiled and combed back on the sides, like
a ocean wave about to break, and piled high in front. He missed that pompadour.
There's not much left where it rose from his head, a little tuft as a souvenir
of what a stylish devil he used to be. He was hurt when he heard them laughing
about his hair. He thought, "What are these people doing in my house? Why am I
feeding them?"
Nothing you do for children is ever wasted. They seem not to notice us, hovering,
averting our eyes, and they seldom offer thanks, but what we do for them is never
wasted. We know that as we remember some gift given to us long ago. Suddenly it's
1951, I'm nine years old, in the bow of a green wooden rowboat, rocking on Lake
Wobegon. It's five o'clock in the morning, dark; I'm shivering; mist comes up
off the water, the smell of lake and weeks and Uncles Al's coffee as he puts a
worm on my hook and whispers what to do when the big one bits. I lower my worm
slowly into the dark water and brace my feet against the bow and wait for the
immense fish to strike.
Thousands of gifts, continually returning to us. Uncle Al though he was taking
his nephew fishing, but he made a permanent work of art in my head, a dark morning
in the mist, the coffee, the boat rocking, whispering, shivering, waiting for
the big one. Still waiting. Still shivering.
--from Leaving Home, Garrison Keillor, Viking Penguin Inc.
|
Old Sweet Songs: A Prairie Home Companion 1974-1976
Lovingly selected from the earliest archives of A Prairie Home Companion, this heirloom collection represents the music from earliest years of the now legendary show: 1974–1976. With songs and tunes from jazz pianist Butch Thompson, mandolin maestro Peter Ostroushko, Dakota Dave Hull and the first house band, The Powdermilk Biscuit Band (Adam Granger, Bob Douglas and Mary DuShane).
