We don't value "things" at all...

I had a hard time falling asleep.  I thought I would have welcomed sleep, as I have been sickish lately, but it didn’t happen.  Maybe it was all that nutritional yeast on my popcorn, or maybe I am really upset.  I was lying there thinking about our discovery today, wondering why I just couldn’t seem to let it go.  Ramona went outside to make her potion in the little playhouse, and found her potions had been emptied from her bottles.  She saw one of the carrots – the ones she made of air-dry clay and paint and little green plastic things that look like carrot tops – cracked and with the carrot top yanked out.  She showed them to me, very discouragedly. The dishes and bottles we had neatly arranged in the playhouse after scrubbing it down were strewn around the patio and a few things on the lawn.  The second carrot she had made was missing as well as the tops to the nice glass bottles my mother had recently given her for potion making.  The other day I saw my roommate’s daughter and a friend playing crazy-wild outside with the hose and hula hoops and some pans, but I didn’t pay much attention. I wish I had.  My roommate is out of town a couple days, so no way to deal with it now…  I keep telling myself that it is just a thing that kids do, it is just a little thing, but it keeps nagging at me.  It is upsetting to me.  It feels like a personal violation.  It feels mean.

I also keep telling myself not to care so much, they are just things…we are too attached to our things in this culture, right? But really we, in this culture, aren’t attached to our things at all.  We are attached to “having” things.  We might be attached to some vague sentimental memories that specific things bring back to us, but really Americans are mostly attached to having things and consuming things, not the things themselves.  New things, not old things.  We are so overwhelmed with things, cheap things, junky things, made to break things, that it actually takes some thought when it comes to valuing things.  Many people react by trying to get rid of things, and feel better for it.  A good Mexican friend of mine used to berate me now and again, about how we Americans don’t have a clue about value.  I since have slowly been opening my eyes to exactly what he means.  In the USA value is attached to costs (which rarely actually reflect any other sort of value), or the prestige or envy that our shiny possessions generate.   If we truly valued our new set of pots and pans, wouldn’t we use them gently and for decades? Wouldn't our garbage dumps be a little smaller? I proudly use the pan my mother gave me that she has been using for 21 years.  But at the same time I feel a tinge of embarrassment when I look around at all the shiny new pots in the houses of my peers (are they really my peers?). What happens to those useful “old” pots anyway? They get tossed so that we can buy something new and shiny.. Or is everything made so poorly now, and then washed so many times in the destructive dishwasher that 20 years is now a dream for a pot?  I miss the depressed rural economy in which I was born…houses full of gently used old things. Garages made into music and art spaces (not full of things that are only there for the purpose of "having.")

Did I get off track?  Yes, I feel a little violated.  Ramona looks up to her friend.  Again I return to the mind changing idea one of my professors once related, “The question is not what it is, but what does it do?”   What does this do?  Something that Ramona feels is important (making potion in her special bottles, using her hand made items for play) has been totally disregarded and decimated.  Something that she valued has been brutally unvalued by someone she admires.  I wonder what that does. 

And I wonder what to say when my roommate comes home. 

Maybe this is our All-American lesson in not valuing "things", but rather "having things".  I can just BUY new ones, right?

Our first tadpole hatchling!

Frog Babies

We are anxiously awaiting baby frogs. I pulled some frogspawn out of a field that had flooded, near a creek, near my house. They have turned into little squiggles. They are about to hatch. Funny thing is that I seem to be more excited than Ramona. Of course Ramona can’t be in charge. That’s what she wants. Well, she could be in charge, but I won’t let her for the safety of the frogs. She would love to pick-up the frogspawn and play with it.

But we are both still having a great time. Having a daughter is the best thing I have ever done. I realize how much she is healing me, inspiring me to be more. It surprises me how much my childhood has come back with her. I realize it is because I shut down as a child and stopped letting certain parts of me thrive or express themselves. It is the Tragic Saga that played out in my own
little personal life. Can a child give to gift of a second chance? I want her to thrive in ways wish I could have. This song I saw today touched me. I am not the only one who has been renewed by a child.

My Little Girl
My little girl, teach me to laugh again
Run in the wind and tumble in the grass again
When you’re so alive and running by my side
Then you teach me to laugh little girl

My little girl, teach me to cry again
To feel my pain and stop and wonder why again
When you bow your head from something I have said
Then you teach me to cry, little girl

My little girl, teach me to love again
Put your arms around me and teach me to hug again
When you know I am sad and you touch me with your hand
Then you teach me to love little girl

My little girl, teach me to live again
Let me be near you and teach me how to give again
Life is fresh and new in everything you do
When you teach me to live, little girl
-Mary Dart

I don’t care if it is hokey. I am letting myself shamelessly love hokey.

Interruptions

I have noticed this strange phenomenon lately. It is children who interrupt conversations, resulting in their parents giving them all their attention. It strikes me as rather odd. Or is it wrong to expect a child to say excuse me or wait until an adult is finished speaking. When I need someones attention, I say their name or excuse me and wait until they can give me their attention. To me it is upsetting when someone walks up while I am in mid sentence, or listening to ones story and just starts talking, adult or child. I wonder then thinking behind this.

So I ask you...Are parents afraid that their child won't feel important if they don't respond to them instantly? Is it perfectly acceptable to interrupt?

Or am I just so boring that any interruption is a breath of fresh air?