After Dinner Horseplay

It’s not our first visit to the emergency room with our kids.

This particular visit was brought to us by after dinner horseplay, iterations of “settle down!” from the kitchen sink as I scrubbed the last dinner pan, followed soon after by the type of crying that spelled out the next few hours before I actually ever saw what happened.

Oliver busted his chin on the floor. So, we buckled them into their car seats with their spaghetti sauce-stained shirts and headed to the ER. Nathan’s assessment assured me there was no critical danger, but I dreaded the stitches that were likely in store for us that evening. 

I knew he was going to be fine, but I still felt anxious and guilty, and maybe even wondered if I would be questioned for bringing my filthy, bleeding child into the ER. As we waited to be called back, one of his preschool classmates was frantically rushed in by her mother with a head wound from...after dinner horseplay with her big sister. A few minutes later, the ER door opened and out sauntered Oliver’s preschool teacher and her daughter. These familiar faces shifted our conversations from debriefing scary experiences with furrowed brows to exasperated laughter and friendly chatter.  

This was on my mind when we read Lost and Found by Oliver Jeffers this week. In this book, a sad, silent penguin shows up on the doorstep of a little boy. Assuming it lost, the boy searches far and wide to find out where the penguin belongs, only to hop in a boat to the South Pole to find the penguin’s home. All the way there, the boy chats with the silent penguin and tells it stories. They don’t find the penguin’s community at the South Pole, but the boy drops the him off, noting he looks sadder than ever. On his trip home, it dawns on the boy that the penguin was never sad, he was just lonely. He turns his boat around, reuniting with the penguin. 

Jeffers reminded me of how important it is to have community. As my family continues to emerge from Covid isolation and settles into a new town, I’m reminded that we are not meant to journey through life alone. We have to find our people that will laugh at our tales, listen to our wild days and … keep us company in the ER waiting room.

We Don't Need Raincoats

When I was a teacher I would cringe on rainy days when that one sassy student pranced in with their umbrella. Yet, the umbrella never ceased to make an appearance, and it was always brought by the Ramona Quimby of the class. 

Those things were cumbersome, held up the class every time, and were undoubtedly left somewhere during the day, their absence only discovered when the kid needed it most. 

Raincoats, please, people. 

Naturally, my own boys both love umbrellas. In fact, they think any percentage of rain is enough to carry that ridiculous contraption with them.

But, this past week, thanks to Amy June Bates, I’ve had a change of heart towards umbrellas.

This change of heart came when Beckett and I read her beautiful picture book, The Big Umbrella, about a personified red umbrella. The umbrella is kind and welcoming and loves to help. The umbrella is spacious and nondiscriminatory in its ability to provide shelter. It covers the ballerinas and the basketball players, the human and the four-legged, the children and the elderly, those in wheelchairs and those walking on two feet. Everyone is covered by this umbrella.

I love this concept because it illustrated to Beckett, though perhaps just in allegory, that we don’t just need raincoats, because raincoats only cover one person. 

In an interview about this book, Amy June Bates said, “I wish I could have an image of the last page that included all the different faces of everyone [under the umbrella]. Because we all belong there.”

The Big Umbrella rightfully showed my little white boy, and reminded me, that our first job is to make sure that no one is getting rained on. I can’t help but wonder whether the events of this last week..hell, this last year...might have been different if we had just all been taught a long, long time ago to make sure that no one was left out in the rain. 

Wait...were we taught that?

I know that I am going to miss the mark on a lot of things as a parent. But, my boys are going to know that they don’t just need raincoats. They need to open their umbrellas.

#amyjunebates

#storybooksbythesea

Bates quote from: https://twowritingteachers.org/2018/02/19/a-conversation-with-amy-june-bates-juniper-bates/

Interview by Stacey Shubitz