Inadvertent lessons

I was lying in bed with my son last night. Just he and I while I tried to get him to sleep. We were following the rituals of going to bed, when he perhaps grew tired of the book I held in my hands or maybe of my voice droning on. That quick, he changed gears. He became playful again in the span of an eye blink (this happens sometimes) a second wind will blow in and he's good to go for another hour of what should be normal sleeping time, re-energized as anything, while my own body slows itself to a sure halt. I was so tired that I let him jump around the bed and roll up and down in a manic fit of face-flushed frenzy. He was smiling and laughing and bouncing on the mattress and it was just too much effort to open my mouth and say, no, settle down, let's try and go to sleep again shall we? I just let him be for the next five minutes and towards the end of that, he took the thin book we had been reading and inadvertently smashed the edge point of it into my left eye, into the soft fleshy part underneath the lower lashes. It. hurt. like. the. dickens. With my hands I covered my face and I cried out softly.

As aware as I was of the pain, I still felt when he burrowed under the sheets and started mumbling muffled sounding oh no's. It was obvious he knew he'd hurt me but I wanted to make sure he understood with what. So I called him out and I pointed to the edge of the book and showed him what had caused my pain. This edge, I said, this corner is what caused mami her ouch. Be careful jan (a pet name)! You have to be careful with things like this! He looked at the book and his little fingers slid slowly over the contours of the hard corner and before I knew what he was about, he had smashed his little hand onto his own eye.

I was so stunned by his action that I failed to stop him that first time but I grabbed him when he went for a second try, and in the moment it took for me to mentally try to sort out the why of his action he broke free from me again, pointed the offending book edge and brought it to his own eye to self-inflict the pain he had caused me.

I grabbed the book and I threw it away. I hugged him tightly to me and rocked him while I kept up a litany of no no jan, no no, don't do that, don't do that to yourself, mami is okay, I promise, I promise. I pulled him back to see if he had done himself any harm and when I discovered he hadn't, I tried to show him my own eye so that he could see for himself what I was trying to say but he was having none of it and though he bent in again to kiss my eye, that action must not have felt like enough of an amends to him because, he left the room to get his father and when he came back with my husband in tow, he pointed at my eye while he told his father what he had done. A confused explanation of mami and her ojo (eye), of my ouch and more oh no's, burst forth from him. More kisses came my way and in the midst of such contrition, I told M what had occurred. Like me, he too, tried to calm our son down. It's okay jan, it's okay, see? maman's alright. To bring the point home, my husband also kissed my eye. Look jan see? mami's ouch is gone, babi kissed it too, see? When all was said and done, I was swimming in kisses like my eyes were swimming in tears. It had hurt me more than I could have imagined to witness what he'd tried to do to himself rather than what he did to me.

Later I recounted once more for my husband what our son's actions had made me feel. Why? I asked him, why would he try to hurt himself? He loves you M replied. He loves his mami and he couldn't stand having hurt you so he hurt himself in punishment. But we don't punish this way I said, and when we discipline we don't do it like this, never like this. Where would he learn such a thing? I felt disturbed by the whole episode. It's okay jan, my husband said. I don't know where he got the idea either. But nothing bad came of it. Just forget it.

Later yet that night, I looked upon my sleeping boy and placed a small kiss on his soft cheek, then a smaller one upon a velvety eyelid. I kissed him like I was giving him absolution for something he did not do. I wonder, in the future, what my son might feel compelled to castigate himself for and I pray that nothing I ever say again or do could cause him a desire to hurt himself because of me. Sometimes, it is so very hard to be a parent. Some days, certain things, are so incomprehensibly unclear. I am still digesting what his empathy last night taught me. When I sort this out, I will tell you what I have learned.

Educating the palate

Photograph use by permission of Karen Walrond at Chookooloonks.com

Do me a favor, think back to the first time you experienced the superlative (as measures go) of something about whose quality until then, you'd never cared much about. For instance, you tasted a really good cup of coffee instead of that mud colored swill someone sold you as java or, you put on an item of clothing that was so well-made it fit you not only properly but comfortably. Though so far I've only mentioned two materially acquired things as examples, my question also applies to the immaterial acquisitions of life. How about the first time you listened to the kind of music that swept you away on an avalanche of emotion too impossible to describe? Or, how about the sensation you get when you go places you'd never thought you could get to, by following the road map someone has given you through their words on page?

You know, too often we tend to stagnate and we forget what it is to replenish the reservoirs we draw upon to survive our days, with the really . good . stuff.
I'm talking about the object, the understanding or the action we should stretch out to because, we've already covered the ground behind us and something new and foreign is what we really need to be moving towards. That experience is out there, waiting for us to chuck out our tried knowns, our comfortable truths.

Why we forget to explore in these new directions can be explained by one or both of the following: 1. You don't realize you haven't changed for a while
2. You over-estimate the effort it would take for you to change something about yourself or how you live your day to day. Either scenario is understandable. We are creatures wedded to our routines. Established ways do make life easier by absolving us from the responsibility we have to explore. Unfortunately, they also impede inner wisdom, and disguise the
full stop we seem to have come to in the quest to further educate the palate of our existence. Why is it important that we not allow this to happen? In a nutshell, we have only the one life to live and it behooves us to improve its quality anyway we can.

How do we change course? We do that not only by making those major decisions we sometimes initiate ourselves though more often than not we are forced into, but also by acting upon the smaller epiphanies we regularly ignore. It can start with a good cup of coffee, some music that transports you, a phenomenal book you've read. You do not need to leave your home or everything you know to change yourself for the better. All you need do, is to not forget how curiosity propels us forward. How deserving we are of our self-betterment. We've got only this one life and days pass us by with nothing learned in them. Are you going to let it continue this way?