The purpose of this piece to keep a record of sweet, funny, or important moments in my children’s lives. None of these anecdotes will appear in a full story, since I’m devoting most of my writing efforts toward the series announced in A Risky Undertaking with Uncertain Outcomes. Thus, this post will serve as a virtual cork board — a place to collect amusing blurbs for the sake of posterity.
Summer Lovin’
In Apparently, Brief Reflections on My Kids’ Middle Names, I marveled at Borealis’s unwitting success with the ladies — which has continued to hold, even with the advent of summer break. Despite weeks without seeing each other, at least two of Bo’s “girlfriends” are still totally smitten with my little misanthrope.
Somewhat unsurprisingly, the first of these girls is Hettie — who, famously, remarked that it didn’t matter whether Borealis knew that he was going to marry her… because he just does whatever she tells him to.
Without any countervailing evidence, Hettie reaffirmed this sentiment at her birthday party in mid-June — and throughout the following week, while she attended VBS with Borealis at our church. My son, true to form, remained remarkably sanguine about the female attention — holding hands whenever she asked, and casually declaring, “Hettie is my best friend.”
Unfortunately, Hettie has some competition: Nyla, Bo’s erstwhile carpool partner. We hadn’t seen Nyla since the end of school — so it was delightful for the kids to run into her during a recent trip to “The Uphill Park”. (Beverly Heights Park — as featured in How to Save a Dog, Part II or The Birthday Crashers. Good memories, to be sure.)
Unfortunately, Bo was at sports camp that morning — so instead of reconnecting with my oldest son, Nyla was instead relegated to [unsubtly] confessing, “I’m secretly in love with Borealis!”
Overhearing this declaration, Nyla’s summer nanny added some context. “Uh, yeah… I brought her to this park yesterday, too — and she staged an imaginary wedding to Borealis for an hour and a half.”
(Which is, needless to say, some pretty serious commitment.)
Of course, I reported this information to Borealis that afternoon.
He shrugged and breezily remarked, “Oh, yeah — lots of people want to marry me.” He paused for a brief moment of introspection, then flippantly concluded, “It’s sure going to be hard to choose!”
Here Comes the Flower Girl
In early July, Australis attended a wedding with Taylor and me. The bride was the consummate picture of chastity and purity — clad in a stunning lace dress with an elegant cathedral train, and crowned with a beautiful veil that transformed her into the very image of the Virgin Mary. Her walk down the long, long Catholic aisle left not a dry eye in the house.
The same… could not have been said about Aza’s walk as the flower girl.
Now, we started practicing for this wedding months ago. In fact, nary a week went by went Australis wasn’t overheard muttering, “Step, step, petal. Step, step, petal.”
So, the issue was not her intellectual grasp of the task: it was her execution thereof.
First of all, there was the muttering.
“Aza, you have to say it in your head,” Bo chided. “Otherwise, everyone in the church will hear you.”
Thankfully, my daughter was able to shift that continuous narration from her “outside voice” to her “inside voice” — so this problem resolved itself.
However, there was still the matter of the petals themselves — or, rather, each petal itself.
“A few at a time!” I prompted her. “Not just one! Like, take a pinchful!”
This prompting worked… sort of. So long as I continually reminded her.
Finally, though, there was the matter of her speed — or lack thereof.
“Aza, you’re walking soooooo slowly!” Bo [accurately] complained. “The bride will never be able to walk down the aisle until you get off of it!”
So Aza sped up… a little. Just enough to give me confidence that she might make it through the actual event.
That is, until we attended the rehearsal, and I saw just how far she would need to walk.
Christ the King Roman Catholic Church is an old church — but more importantly, it’s a long church. So, soooooooo long.
In fact, the church is *so long* that Australis’s maiden voyage down the aisle clocked in just shy of two minutes — even as the curmudgeonly priest repeatedly barked, “Faster! Faster!”
I was torn between shame-faced silence and uncontrollable giggles — but the latter won out, especially once I saw Aza’s comically tragic expression. She trudged her way toward the altar as through she were a pall-bearer, not a flower girl.
“Faster!” the priest yelled.
… Which launched me into a fresh wave of giggles.
That night, I hammered home one simple instruction.
“Australis. You need to race down the aisle. As fast as you can go without running.”
“Ok, Mommy,” she assented sweetly.
“Grab huge handfuls of petals and toss them down as you hurry down the aisle.” I paused, then added, “And you can toss down any extras at the very end.”
My daughter squirmed into my arms . “Ok, Mommy. I’ll go fast.”
The next day was ludicrously hectic. I felt as though I were preparing Australis for *her own* wedding — complete with expensive white dress, crystalline hairdo, satin shoes, delicate manicure, and tasteful makeup.
(I, on the other hand, hoped no one noticed my reeking stress sweat or dirt-stained cuticles.)
“Remember, go fast,” I whispered one last time as I prepared to send Aza down the aisle. I glanced up and saw that the [extremely swift] ring bearer was already halfway to the altar — so ready or not, it was Aza’s time to go.
“You’re gonna do great,” I encouraged, then gave her a gentle push forward. I quickly circled around to the side aisle and scurried to my pew at the front of the church. From that vantage point, I could see Aza’s methodical — but not quite slow — rate of progress. Indeed, she was moving faster than I thought possible — dutifully tossing handfuls of petals to the ground as she stepped purposefully toward the altar. The only problem was…
“She looks totally miserable,” Taylor observed under his breath.
And she did. Once again, she looked utterly funereal.
I grimaced at my own oversight. “We worked on speed, but I must have forgotten about affect.”
Taylor nodded sagely, then whispered back. “Well, you did a good job. She may look like a corpse… but at least she’s a fast corpse.”
I groaned in response.
After a respectable amount of time, Australis reached the end of the aisle — at which point, I discovered my other egregious error. I had pictured her, you know, tastefully scattering the remaining petals just before the altar — but we hadn’t actually practiced that part. So, instead, she chose the most efficient route: simply flipping the basket upside-down and dumping out all the remaining petals.
Everyone laughed. (Except for me. I just cried a little.)
Our dour daughter made it over to Taylor and me, frown still intact. That is, until she saw our pew partner: the ring bearer, whose mother was a bridesmaid.
Aza barely held in a squeal, and I barely held in another groan.
Taylor: <grunts humorously> “See? Now there’s my favorite Aza smile!”
When Play-Pretend Means Everything
This will sound irredeemably meta and elitist — but I think a lot about theory of mind.
That psychological concept is not something that’s typically thrown around in everyday conversations — but it is in our house, and there’s a good [non-meta, non-elitist] reason why.
But first, some background. “Theory of mind” encompasses a pretty broad category within the field of cognitive science — although, unfortunately, I find that many of the “official” definitions are painfully dense and/or impractical.
Thus, when I describe the idea to someone, I usually say something like this: “Theory of mind is the ability to cast one’s consciousness outside of oneself. For instance, I could wonder, ‘What would it be like to be a bat?’ — and then I can cast my mind into that bat-Holly avatar and imagine what it would be like to be *not me*. Accordingly, theory of mind is an integral part of being human — because *I* can imagine, however imperfectly, what it’s like to be a bat… but a bat can’t ever imagine what it’s like to be *me*.”
And, indeed, theory of mind is an integral part of “being human” — although, that’s not to say that every human has equal capacity to perceive the mental states of others. There’s one condition, in particular, that renders humans either wholly or partially unable to perform the skills implied by theory of mind — and that condition is *autism*.
Why does this matter? Well, you might recall that my paternal line has a long and strong genetic history of autism spectrum disorders. [Note: This genetic reality — and its implications — are discussed at length in Faith is the Substance of Things Hoped For.] Of course, my sister got the most severe case of ASD — but the disorder didn’t leave the rest of us untouched, either. For instance, it won’t surprise you that I consistently struggle to accurately discern the mental states of others. I have the inclination to empathize — but not the ability. And beyond me, there’s *certain* males in my genetic family (ahem, ahem) who have neither the inclination nor the ability to empathize.
Anyway, *that’s* why I’m so hyper-aware of anything related to theory of mind — because it’s a very real deficiency in my genetic family.
Thus, I celebrate every small victory — for instance, each time one of my kids follows my line-of-sight. (“Yay, good joint attention!”) Or whenever they apologize unprompted. (“Excellent empathy!”) Or any time they read a room and behave accordingly. (“Thank you for lowering your voice in the doctor’s office.”) Or, especially, whenever they pretend to be someone else.
Now, there’s an important distinction to be made here. “Action mimicry” is not the same as “avatar creation” — that is, following a pre-established script requires a different set of skills than does imagining and inhabiting a new character. [Note: My sister can somewhat accomplish the former, but she has no capacity for the latter.]
… Which brings me to the actual anecdote of this blurb. Just the other day, twenty-seven-month-old Rhys did something that I’ve never seen another two-year-old do: he independently ideated and inhabited a fictional character.
Here’s how it happened. We were all in the living room: Taylor and Bo strategized their next move in Tears of the Kingdom, Aza drew in a dot-to-dot book, and I waged a fruitless war against our eternal mess of toys and books.
Rhys, meanwhile, had other activities on his mind.
For the dozenth time, I chided, “Rhys — please put your penis away.”
My toddler smirked at me and countered, “No. I leave my penis out.”
Finally fed up, I creakily rose to my feet and snapped, “Fine. I have a solution that you won’t like.”
I was mistaken, of course. As I stuffed my son into his rarely-used Burt’s Bees sleep sack, he chuckled and patted the soft fabric. “I like it!” he affirmed.
I rolled my eyes. I doubted he would have been so sanguine if the sack had been less voluminous. While it effectively eliminated access to his penis, it didn’t seem to limit his mobility beyond that. As I watched, he scrambled back onto the couch to snuggle next to Aza.
“You look so silly!” she giggled.
“Yeah — you look like a baby,” Bo jeered.
And with that pronouncement, Rhys’s entire affect shifted.
It was absolutely stunning to watch. In a moment, he shed his normally alert gaze and took on a more glassy stare, then squeaked, “Me baby!”
His siblings roared with laughter. Taylor and I, in contrast, made shocked eye contact.
Encouraged by the reception, Rhys cuddled even closer to Aza and peeped, “Mama! Me baby!”
“He’s pretending Aza is his mom!” Bo shrieked.
“Yeah… he is,” I mumbled in agreement. I continued to look on in amazement.
Finally, Taylor spoke for both of us when he said, “It’s weird to see a two-year-old pretend to be a baby.”
And that was the crux of the matter. It wasn’t that Rhys’s acting was good. (It wasn’t.) It was that he was acting, at all. This wasn’t just pretending that a banana is a phone (aka “object substitution”) — this was another skillset entirely.
[Note: Indeed, research suggests that “pretend identities” are traditionally the purview of three- to five-year-olds.]
Admittedly, maybe this wasn’t actually that big of a deal — but to me, with my genetic background, it felt like a huge deal.
And who knows? Maybe Rhys will go one to become an actor, or a politician, or a therapist, or any other occupation that requires facility with theory-of-mind skills.
If that ever happens, then we’ll probably look back to this moment as the very first spark of future promise.
