uttered

April 16, 2007 | Filed Under ordinary 

it’s hard to be small, to have more nos than yeses in the day, to be full of ideas that are too dangerous or socially unacceptable, like using power tools, or spitting wherever and on whatever or whomever you please. but it’s hard to be parents, too. sometimes when i’m teaching and parents are sitting on the floor helplessly while their lone two year old loudly sings, “the twelve days of christmas” while everyone else is singing “hush, little baby,” i feel relief, a universal relief that we all get to do this, that we all have bits and pieces of the crazy we carry around with us, that it’s not just me and my inability to mirror heavenly parenthood as perfectly as i think that i should, that all kids make loud and embarassing proclamations about the darkness of the skin of the woman standing two feet away from our anemic complexions, the magnitude of fatness that is causing “that man right there buying cereal!” to limp down the aisle, the high-volumed awed and adoring of “that cute little man with the goatee” who stands as tall as henry.

here is a gem: henry as photographer being pointed at with a grown up finger while jude looks on. so pink. such pictures taken by henry make us very aware of exactly what it’s like to be small and mischevious, and, more importantly, what it looks like from such an angle to be pointed at accusingly. i’m sure our mutual snapping out with a yell and crabby expressions involving gritted teeth and eyebrows look worse. maybe we should have henry take pictures of that.

Comments