We have had amazing weather over the last few days, a joyous send-up of that feeling of spring. This week is supposed to be a lot cooler but—oh!—what a pleasure to have had some warmth, a chance to run around outside without a jacket on, and without that frigid, stiff feeling in your fingers.
My kids have been bike-crazy now that we live where there is an actual sidewalk. (I am a big fan of sidewalks.) Council is allowed to ride her bike 3 houses down the street on either side. Paolo, 2. Vigil, 1. We started out with a rule that I had to be out there with them if they wanted to play in front. This is partly because there is actually a fair amount of foot traffic on our street and I like to supervise the kids. It’s also partly because the car traffic on the street goes really fast sometimes (even though it’s probably a 25 mph zone). And lastly it’s because we have a lot of kid neighbors and I like to make sure everyone’s getting along and living safe.
Several weeks into the thaw of spring, however, I see that I am not needed nearly as much as I initially thought (feared). I’ve loosened up the rules a bit, letting Council ride her bike out front even if I am inside or in the back. I’ve gone so far as to let all three kids do that, and I open windows or doors to monitor them. I just get too bored sitting on the front stoop while they go back and forth, back and forth, nearly crashing into each other, playing pretend games, whining that the other cut them off, or insisting that I watch while they perform an amazing act of putting on the brakes. I sit there feeling very antsy about how I should be preparing dinner or don’t I need to check my email or make a phone call. I feel bad admitting this as though it makes me selfish but frankly I think it’s just a case of mom not really being needed so much. If I were I would probably be on my feet a lot more managing them, like when you are teaching a toddler not to hit and you have to be on his case a lot. These kids are doing great without me.
I told Council, “Look, if you fall off your bike and get hurt, and I am inside, I am not going to know or see or hear you. Your job is to manage to make it back to the house. If you get hurt so bad that you cannot make it back to the house, what are you going to do?” She said, “Make it back to the house.” “That’s right you are,” said I. Bleeding or not. Broken or not. I can’t be there to watch her every move if she is going to be Speed Racer Bicyclette.
The other day she came in probably 2 minutes after this exchange. Moaning and groaning. Crying and whining. Big, nasty, bloody scrape on her elbow. Several days later it’s still patched up with three or four Band-Aids.
Likewise, yesterday, Vigil (4) was in the backyard playing with next-door-neighbor Jose (9). The kids were playing (and squabbling) for most of the afternoon, as we have three kids and they have four kids and they all have bikes and attitudes and opinions and a lot of enthusiasm. Somehow Jose ended up throwing a baseball into Vigil’s face, splitting his lip and gushing a lot of blood. Vigil had to hold an ice pack to his lip for a long time before he felt better—first freaking out because the cloth we wrapped the pack in was getting all bloody.
Paolo started riding a two-wheeler this weekend, with training wheels, so while he has so far escaped without any major spring injuries, I foresee one any day now, given that he is now much higher off the ground than he was on his trike. And he is a big, heavy kid, larger than most five-year-olds. His head alone is half his body weight. He rides aggressively on his pink bike.
Oh, yes, pink. He loves his pink bike. Pink is his favorite color. It even has little multicolor bead things on the wheel spokes that make a sort of popping sound as the wheels spin. The bike is totally a girl’s bike. The tires are white. The bike is pink and has fancy blue lettering in places. Paolo loves it. I got the bike a number of years ago at a free family exchange place, thinking it might be good for one of the kids someday, and then Council grew attached to a different (boy’s) bike we also got for free. We jazzed that bike up with a basket in front, a new seat, and tassles, and she’ll never want to change bikes. And, happily, Paolo loves his pink bike. He also wants to grow a ponytail.
At dinner last night Council experimented with telling Paolo he was a sissy. This was new. I had not heard her use that word before. I doubted she even knew what it meant, because she used the word with a minimum of venom.
“You think Paolo is a sissy, eh?” I said. River was out of the room, taking a phone call. “Yeah,” she said. Paolo was totally unfazed. He ate his pasta. “What’s a sissy?” I asked. “A sissy is a boy who wants to be like a girl,” she said. Hm, pretty accurate. “Where did you hear the word sissy?” I asked. Council reported that it was from a Tomie de Paola book, Oliver Button is a Sissy. They read this in her first-grade classroom. Apparently the book was educational, yet not quite educational enough, or it was not processed thoroughly, because she came away thinking that it was perfectly alright to use at home with her brother in this way—not recognizing that it was a kind of slur.
It led to an interesting discussion and an affirmation of the equality of women and men. We agreed that it was perfectly alright for boys to like Barbies, pink things and “beautiful things,” as Paolo put it, and also totally acceptable for girls to like Hot Wheels and “cool things,” again Paolo’s words. Council insisted that she does not like Hot Wheels, which we all also agreed was absolutely fine. And we will not call one another sissies. Pink or no pink, scrape or no scrape, doting mom or no doting mom.