5/02/2006

How to Make Me Tear up and Laugh at the Same Time

song du jour: uh...

mood: It's late...

From an email from my mom:

Now, I know that you don't like a minute-by-minute accounting of his time with me, but what I wanted to tell you again is what an incredible job you're doing with this child. He is just so totally awesome--and I know something about gifted children!

This evening, while he was speeding around the tennis court displaying his new cycling skills, he said, "Gran, Gran, we can play the Sons of Liberty! I will be Paul Revere and you can be Robert Newman." He then got off his horse and said, "Goodbye wife." He walked over to me and said, "I have news, America is not its own country. It's a colony and the Sons of Liberty are mad that England tells the colony what to do! You go over there, Robert New woman (Gran, I can't call you Newman because you're a woman) and hang two lanterns in Christ Church and I will ride to Lexington to tell Sam Adams and John Hancock." He then jumped on his bike and rode around the tennis court yelling, "To arms, to arms, the Redcoats are coming!"

I may buy the books that provide his scripts, but you're the one who nurtures the intellect and incredible emotional intelligence. You're the one who has made him what he is today. You may be bored by tales of his precocious demonstrations, but they will make amazing reading for his biography.


My mother is practically ecstatic with the success of her attempt to instill in her grandchild a far better love of American history than she did her daughter, who isn't interested in much past 1600 AD. I worry though, what will happen if Skyler's love of history isn't merely limited to the American Revolution. Will the munchkin bike with the training wheels and the little flames on the side really work as well for Hannibal's army of elephants as it does for Paul Revere's horse, and what the hell will our house look like when he learns about the sacking of Rome or the conquests of Genghis Khan?!?

Sometimes I look at this kid and think I (vividly!) remember being pregnant, and I know they didn't mix up the babies in the hospital. Although much of parenting often becomes this endless blur of sleep deprivation, interspersed with chunks of an outside the box lifestyle, and I am keenly aware that this little being spends the majority of his time with me, I still frequently look at him in total amazement and wonder how in the hell I 'did' that. :-)

No comments: