Called "Funny Positions in Which Erin's Children Fall Asleep."  Can you believe this?

~MB~

This is the way that this child goes through life.  Do you think he looked before he leaped?  Not a chance.

~MB~

During a break in the rainy weather this weekend, we all piled into the car and went to the beach to see tide pools.  "Get your coats!" Father Bird shouted as we went out the door, "It's gonna be coooold out there!"

Some of us obeyed.  

Others did not.

I had given Father Bird the camera.  I'm often the one behind the camera, and sometimes it's a bit of a drag.  This time I wanted to point things out, wonder about things, and run down the beach with my children, things that are hard to do with the bulky, heavy lens-that-nearly-ruined-our-marriage pressed to my eye or banging at my side. 

Which meant that I was in the pictures.  When I open a set of pictures taken at any given event, I try to understand what story they tell. But when I looked at the photos from Saturday, all I could do was stare at myself.  Why does my hair look so nasty?  Wow, those were not the best shoes to wear to the beach on a rainy day. And, when I saw this one,

Do I REALLY look like that from the back??  I'm not sure how I thought I looked from behind, but I'm pretty sure this is not it.  I think I must have thought those jeans looked better on me than they actually do.  I think my hair was supposed to be better. 

Once I got over the fact that my from-behind-myself self image was obviously skewed, though, I looked at what I was doing.  My son, who had completely ignored his father when he'd said, "Get your coats,"  was cold.  I had gotten my coat, and I was not cold.  As soon as we got out of the car he began to complain about how cold he hadn't known it was going to be.  And I thought, as we descended the million-and-one stairs down the cliffs to the beach, as I watched my children fan out and begin to exclaim in wonder over the life caught in the pools in the rocks, that I could react in one of two ways here.  Either I could say to him, no, son, your father said get your coat, and you did not, and now you need to be cold so you'll remember, or I could take off my coat and give it to him, at which point I'll be cold. 

What do I want to teach him today, I wondered. 

Then I thought about the grown man that he will someday be.  Someday he'll be faced with the same type of decisions that I was faced with Saturday.  Do I want him to turn to other people and say, "you made your bed, now sleep in it"?  "I brought my coat, and if I gave it to you, I'd be cold."?

Or do I want him to see discomfort, and know immediately what to do?  Will he remember when someone took off her coat and gave it to him, and went on through life being cold herself?  Will he unbutton his jacket when someone else needs it, and give it freely away?

Oh, I hope so.  I hope that's what I look like from behind.

~MB~

Looking at the cover of the movie Labyrinth this morning, my 8-year-old asks me, "Why does that evil woman need to steal that baby?"

"That's not a woman," I say.

"It's not??"  Pause.  Careful thought.  "If that evil man wants a baby, why doesn't he just find a woman and marry her?"

If life were really so blissfully simple, what would people make movies about?  Not, I suppose, that anything in Labyrinth resembles real life in any way whatsoever.  Maybe they ought to make a sequel: The Goblin King Finds True Love, Settles Down, and Stops Stealing Other People's Babies". 

Would he be too tired at the end of the day, I wonder, to dance around in shiny tight pants with his Muppet friends anymore?  Because that truly would be a shame. 

Possibly....possibly we analyze things a little too much.

~MB~

This week I've been making capes for my children.  Because capes are, bar none, the most requested dress-up item in our house.  Up till now these poor babies have been bringing me scraps of fabric, baby blankets, towels, anything that remotely resembles a cape, to tie around their necks. 

And so I took pity on them and got some shiny cape fabric. It was requested that the capes be able to "blow in the wind". 

And oh, how capes have changed our lives forever.  They're now all superheroes, all the time. 

This one refers to himself and anyone wearing a cape as a superhero.  As in, "Dis superhero is gonna go OUTside," and "Hey, superhero!  Why are you climbing dat tree?"

An alternate identity, as easy to put on and off as buttoning the one big button on the front of a shiny cape.  Two questions: 

How did we ever live without capes?

What colors do I want on mine?

~MB~