Yesterday’s main elements for me – outside of a slow sloggy day at work that ultimately proved productive but took some real effort at self-motivation – combined plum-picking and a devastating migraine that sent me to bed early. It’s unusual, but not quite rare to have two bad ones in a week, but the accompanying disorientation, especially from finally emerging on the other side with a feeling of missing time, offers a sense of deja vu. The only antidote to which is finding something new enough among the details of the evening to make it stand out.
Turns out, yesterday was Graham’s first time on a ladder. A proper ladder, the one we bought at Home Depot earlier this year. He has grown to love playground ladders, especially the curved playground ladders that I don’t remember existing in my own childhood: a gentler, welcome introduction to climbing that is not purely vertical nor (like the unconquerable monkey bars) purely horizontal. I’ll throw a picture below in case you aren’t a frequent playground denizen like I’ve become. Watching one’s offspring tackle one of these and restraining the instinct to hover and dote is an early salvo in what will be a lifelong journey of reluctantly declining to be an anticipatory safety net for my son.
I was often frustrated that my own father wouldn’t just let me endure and navigate bad experiences on my own without trying overly hard to help. It was a loving, admirable reaction he brought to these situations, and there were plenty of times where I needed and accepted his help, but it was also overapplied and made me feel sometimes he didn’t trust me to pick my own battles, or try to sufficiently see them off. There are worse things, I would often tell him, than getting hurt. And especially than risking it.
That said, risking a toddler falling off the penultimate step of a ladder is more serious than some of the slights and misdeeds I wanted more autonomy to handle myself in my youth. After work yesterday, Graham and I went to the backyard to make an attempt at retrieving all the remaining plums from their respective branches so they could be eaten by friends and neighbors before joining the fermenting mess of bee-ridden plum juice coating the ground around our deck. Graham begged to be allowed up the ladder to help, with the persistent repetition of toddlerhood borne of being misunderstood so frequently in early attempts at language. (Even now, it’s often hard to comprehend him in car or crowded venues, so we ask him to repeat slowly and frequently, encouraging him to do the same when the answer is just “no.”)
When my inclination is to say no to my child, I try to question myself and really justify the reason for this simple and popular parental reply. Graham is only just starting to ask “why?” and I know that why not? is around the corner, as it should be. And as an intermediary, he’s recently embraced “because,” though his explanations are generally circular or their own form of repetition:
“Daddy, I want to climb the ladder to pick plums. Because I really want to do it, daddy.”
I’m worried that you will fall off and hurt yourself is really just a version of I’m worried I won’t be able to keep you safe. And while that’s a legitimate concern for, say, jaywalking across a busy four-lane road, it feels more like my own overgrown fear of my own inadequacy in the closed environment of the backyard when we’re the only two people there, even if we’re four feet off the ground and reaching into the trees.
So I offered some precocious preliminary lessons on ladder safety: grounding it squarely, testing it, going up one step at a time, slowly. Then we climbed, me behind him the whole way, usually a step or two down, almost physically shielding his body against the shiny metal to keep him secure.
He was overjoyed. Frustrated, soon, with branches and leaves that stayed in his face, with plums out of reach (we’ve done a lot of picking lately and his arms are rather short), with his own uncertainty at being up so high (like I was, he is fundamentally a cautious child – most of the time). But in childhood, as in so much of life, it’s the fleeting moments of discovery and joy that count the most. And sometimes they’re all the sweeter for having to persist through some initial rejections to get there.
At dinner a half-hour later, having already split a rare cookie with me, he asked for plums. I deferred from the arguments in my head to decline, even before they fully formed. “It’s only fair,” I said, offering a needless explanation aloud to myself. “you picked them yourself!”
Graham was uninterested in my need to justify. “More plums, daddy! Because I want to eat more plums.”
This is the ninth post in the One Thing series.
#8: Home Depot Away from Home
#7: It’s the Heart that Matters More
#6: Bed by Day
#5: Picking Plums
#4: Forgive, Don’t Forget
#3: Call Your Mother
#2: In the Land of Make-Believe
#1: Wistful Wisteria
Introduction: Announcement and Rules
