Home, Under Construction

At nearly three, Paddy has developed an intolerance of idleness.  The minute he awakes he climbs out of the Pack-and-Play he has temporarily been sleeping in at the foot of Miss S.’s poster bed and exits into the hall.  Without a word he softly opens the door to his own room, where our host daughter Sina sleeps on her full sized mattress and box spring on his floor. 

                    

“Good morning, Sina!” he says cheerfully, standing in the door.   

“Good morning, Paddy,” she replies in a soft hoarse voice, “. . . do you want to snuggle here?”

Without a word, he hops in next to her.  I can hear him hum as he sucks his fingers and rubs his blanket under his nose. 

Freshly laundered towels in hand, I witness the whole scene from behind the closet door with a sense of the uncanny, as if it is a scene from a favorite film, in which just one small, undecipherable element has been changed.  

I put the towels on their shelf and peek inside my own room, disoriented.  Under a tarp, the clock reads 7:15 a.m., as usual.

What in the world is going on?  Sina, the queen of late-morning-early-afternoon sleep, allowing her three year old host brother to wheedle his way into the quiet space of her dreams? 

To the mother of this teenager and toddler, this seems something of an apocalyptic event . . . on the scale of the lion and lamb becoming friends.

As two of our four bedrooms have become construction zones, the whole family is crowding into the two remaining bedrooms.  Add the scabbard of fresh wood dust coating everything, the spotty water and power outages, and the militant arsenal of power tools we have to step over and around the minute we cross the threshold into the yard, you’ve got a sure recipe for a tall order of irritability and some very short tempers. 

.  .  . The fact is, this home renovation seems to have made Nobel Peace ingénues of at least two of us in these last few weeks.  The ones presently snuggling with each other.

I finish the laundry thinking of how far they had come over the course of the year. 

• In early September Sina had responded to Paddy’s 7 o’something greetings with the upbeat and polite ‘please let me sleep a little longer’ of someone who clearly felt as if she were a guest in the house.  He showed no indication he took her seriously, and instead proceeded to crawl all over her in her bed.
• By November the honeymoon was clearly over; she was heaving herself out of bed in a semi-catatonic state to carry him back into his room and sternly telling him to stay in bed until mom or dad got up.  He cried, clearly shocked his charm wasn’t working.   But he stayed in his room.
• By February, she was simply, sternly scolding him to get out of her room with a pointed finger when seven rolled around and he made his entrance.  He relented and left quietly to play by himself.
• . . . and now, come June, they’d clearly made something of a compromise.

As I head downstairs to make a cup of coffee, I wonder if the house construction has something to do with Sina’s having welcomed Paddy to snuggle with her . . . if the perpetual chaos of bodies, objects, and events in our living space has softened her will.  But this morning Paddy’s behavior had shown evidence of change too.  He waited in the doorway to be welcomed, seeming to have become (at least a little) more sensitive, respectful of her needs and expectations for sleep.

I smile as I realize that with or without the wood dust, ours is a home under construction; in their careful consideration of one another, Sina and Paddy just might prove themselves to be master builders in the making.

In one week Sina will be heading back to another home and another family, one that awaits her eagerly in Stuttgart Germany, after her year here as exchange student has come to an end.  By the time the dust settles on this house construction project, she will be gone.  But in terms of this home construction project she committed herself to over the course of the last year, she will continue to leave an indelible mark.

I wonder, and worry a little, how Paddy will take the discovery she isn’t there when seven o’clock sets him wandering in search of her .  .  . and yet, having been a host parent four times over, I know that the end of her year here is just the beginning of a life of home-building between the two of the them, among us all.

The Photo that Sent Songbirds Around the World Aflight

There are people who put the Energizer Bunny to shame.    Do you know the type?  The ones who have more energy than God, who throw the whole of their creative being, heart and soul, into everything that they do, so that as they pass through their room they almost seem to manifest their own light and create their own wind?

The dentist known as Dr. "Pickles" is one of these people . . . a force of nature.  Good-will-good-nature.  I’m not so secretly in awe of the way she maintains a successful dental practice, remains uber-connected in her community, and extraordinarily involved in her child’s school as a room mom, scout leader, and all-star volunteer . . . all without having to be occasionally scraped off the floor or pried out of an involuntary fetal position. 

Anyway, in late April, I received a phone call from her about Kwaku.  She wanted to tell me how much she enjoyed the book as a parent, and as someone concerned with the phenomenon of bullying in schools.  “The story is fantastic,” she later wrote in an email, “the illustrations are jaw-dropping.  I understand that writing a book is a labor of love … But that book is a book that makes a difference in the world — my daughter and I have talked about it for two days now.  I’d like to buy some copies.”

Buy she did.  She bought 35 of them.  One book for every child in the first grade classes at her daughter’s school, and then some to pass on to others — her own master hairstylist, several family members and friends. 

At Songbird’s inception back in 2010, I envisioned a give back program entitled Songbirds Around the World.  Through it families and classes who have purchased and enjoyed a Songbird title can send us a photo of themselves reading the book together, along with the name of a library they would like a copy donated to.  Songbird will choose one photo a month, and donate a copy of the book to the specified library.  . . up to 12 books a year.   



The First Graders:
June 2011 Songbirds Around the World Photo



This delightful picture, taken after Dr. Pickles distributed the books she had given to the first grade, was not sent to me as part of the Songbirds Around the World program, but simply given to me. Nevertheless, I can’t think of a better way of inaugurating this program than by honoring Dr. Pickles's extraordinary measure to get Kwaku into the hands of young readers, and by choosing this fantastic photo that captures it.

At her behest, the first Songbirds Around the World book will be donated to Joplin Public Library in Joplin, MO this week. 

In the words you once offered to me, Dr. Pickles, thank you for doing good in the world.  And raising a lovely child on top of that.  The wonderful photo that documents your gift of literacy has enabled Songbird to fly a little further afield, into more children’s libraries, hands and hearts.