Thursday, April 26, 2007

Everything Old is Still Great

As I lay in bed last night in the dark, I suddenly came to an awareness that I'd been humming "Edelweiss" from "The Sound of Music" over and over for a solid half hour, and meanwhile had been having a thorough inner discussion with myself about something completely different while not missing a beat with the song. This is one of Noah's regular bedtime tunes. I start with something more upbeat like "Old MacDonald Had a Farm", usually inserting "...he had a duck" and "...he had a cat" many times in between just a few other animals, because he knows those words ("guck" and "gat") and delights in saying them when I sing them. Then I sing "Hush Little Baby" because he likes to hear about Daddy getting him things. Then maybe "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" or some modern folk song if I can remember the lyrics. Then it's "Edelweiss" and "Edelweiss" and more "Edelweiss", singing and then humming, until it's all over for the night and Noah turns away, sighing into the dark. I've been singing these same songs for nine months now, with little variation, at this same time each evening. Noah wiggles and snuggles up against me because he knows it's time to let go. How blessed are we to have a baby that loves to go to bed.

Some reading I received this week from our "home visitor", a child development specialist who visits us monthly and provides various tools to help us be good parents, discussed how much babies like repetition. They enjoy recognizing things they know, and grow confidence when they can expect and predict what will happen next.

Noah has many books, but Matthew and I both know what his favorites are, even though it's rare that the three of us all sit and read together. In some books, he even has favorite moments that he's made clear to us - he laughs, or points, or looks carefully at certain pages. In Doggies by Sandra Boynton, it's this one: "9 dogs on a moonlit night - Owwwwoooooo!" In The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle it's the page with all the different foods that the caterpillar eats through (one slice of swiss cheese, one piece of cherry pie, one sausage, etc.). Noah rushes through the other pages to get to that one. It's easy to tell the books that he's not interested in because he either tosses them aside like yesterday's newspaper, or pushes them out of our hands when we start to read them. Unfortunately, Goodnight Moon is one such book. He's just not interested. Which is just awful to me because I love that book. I keep thinking that maybe he'll enjoy it this time, but whenever I try it he grabs it from my hand and stretches way over so he can drop it off the edge of the bed. How much clearer can he be?

Loving what you love, and being just fine with more of it...Ain't it the truth for all of us? In this world of New and Better, how right Noah is - there are so many things that as an adult I know I can practice or come back to over and over again, to bring me to a place of comfort, solace, relaxation, confidence:

Long showers or baths
Going to the ocean
Movies
A phone call to that dearest friend
Music
A simple meal
My journal or poetry notebook

Ahhh. My favorite things. Just listing them out feels like staking my territory. What are the old standbys that make you feel like you've come home?

2 comments:

Sarah Faragher said...

Coming home: visits with my books (of course); certain yoga postures that are so familiar and make me feel strong and balanced; flowers growing up out of the ground; almost anywhere the ocean meets the land, mealtime with people I love sitting around a table. Beautiful tiny organic salad greens make me want to cry sometimes, I feel so thankful for them...

Kate Faragher Houghton said...

Hi Sarah and thank you for sharing - when we are feeling down or just detached, isn't it wonderful that there are so many small and profound reminders of ourselves and what we care about. Like Hansel and Gretel and the breadcrumbs, except they last.