It is interesting how much emotion can be conveyed with a small amount of words. For instance, this morning as I was getting ready to leave the house I called up the stairs to everyone to let them know that I was leaving for work. Each of my family members replied in turn in their own unique ways:
Grasshopper: BYE DADDY, I LOVE YOU!
Cricket: I belong to you, Daddy!
My wife: The money is on the table.
The last sounds odd out of context, though in truth there was no immediate conversational context to it – my wife and I just have a very down-to-earth relationship and have a knack for picking up random long-dead conversation threads and/or answering each others unasked questions. But the tone of each response reflects much greater depth of the emotions behind them than the words themselves convey. My kids are full of exuberant, idealistic affection for the father that they only see in passing in the morning and for a few hours in the evening. My wife, already in the trenches of dealing with getting the kids ready for the day, sticks with purposeful messaging (the love we share is known, implied, and not in need of constant reinforcement).
I can’t help but wonder sometimes, when in my own life the level of emotional openness and heightened expression that my kids seem to exude had faded. What are the factors that delay or expedite this process? When should I expect my daughter to transition from her current puppy-dog phase to something more similar to the cynical teen that I’m sure she might become? Should I try to stave it off or just accept what comes?
The oddity of it is that it is so dissimilar to my own attitude I find myself sometimes wondering if we are really related. I wouldn’t necessarily call myself cynical (though I certainly maintain a healthy level of cynicism), but I’m definitely a picture of nonchalance. A perfect example of my cool under pressure demeanor is one that is often cited by my in-laws – usually around Thanksgiving.
The event in question happened during a Thanksgiving about a decade ago at my wife’s aunt’s house. While my aunt-in-law and several other of the matriarchs of the family were buzzing about the kitchen and the majority of the men and children where engrossed in whatever football game happened to be on, I walked through the dining room to grab a snack from the kitchen island on the other end of it. As I did so, I noticed that one of the drip candles that were on the table seemed to have dropped a piece of wick and as a result a circle of the tablecloth about two inches across had been charred and was slowly edging wider by some very low flames. I calmly walked into the kitchen and asked my aunt-in-law “Aunt Ann, your table is on fire. Do you have a pot holder I can borrow?” to which she responded with a flabbergasted “What!?”. While she wended through the people in the kitchen to get to the dining room and see what I was referring to, I grabbed the first thing I could find to handle the task – a damp dishrag. By the time I got back there, she and two of my wife’s cousins were watching the now soda-can diameter ring of fire in abject shock. I skirted around them and patted the fire out with the dishrag, blew out the candles to avoid any possible recurrence, and grabbed a couple of sweet gherkins from the pickle tray and went about my business. The rest of the ladies seemed to bustle about it for a while before the table was retrimmed and the commotion reformed in the kitchen where it previously resided. Many of the men didn’t even seem to notice anything had happened. But my aunt-in-law tells the story of it almost every year.
Anyway, I know that I am somewhat unique in my lack of excitability. But there are times when I wish a little of it would rub off on my kids (and perhaps at moments my wife as well). While I appreciate the positive end of their heightened emotional state, the negative side of it is rarely much fun. Cricket is a picture of indecisiveness – she can easily waste a half-hour trying to decide whether pink or yellow shorts go better with the brown shirt she is wearing (and then throw on leprechaun socks). Grasshopper will have a 20-minute stand off over not liking green beans (including throwing silverware and having a tantrum across the house) before finally eating a forkful and realizing he loves them. The trouble with family drama seems to be the balance – keeping the levels of comedy and tragedy in line and not pegged at 11.