Spirit Fingers

I took last week off to take Claire on an overnight field trip to the Oregon coast.

Of course, as soon as we got there, Chas finished my book and sent it back to me. And of course, I couldn’t open the files. Two days of torture later, and I’m delighted to say it was all good news. Chas went above and beyond what I asked of him and scrubbed it clean of grammatical errors. In short, Duende is ready to shop around. If any of you know an agent or publisher in the market for a charming and hilarious adventure story for teen boys, I have an honest-to-goodness manuscript they should see.

But I digress…
This isn’t why we came here today.

You might remember that I’ve mentioned, perhaps once or twice, that my daughter is a little different. She’s what researchers and psychologists call “spirited”, and what teachers or other parents might call “unruly”. If you want a refresher, here and here are some older posts about it.

It’s never easy. She has elaborate tantrums that can end by destroying her bedroom or sobbing hysterically in our neighbor’s driveway. (She calls it her sunny spot but she mostly just cries there. I don’t know why)

I do a lot of apologizing. When she melts down in front of her friends at the indoor playground, I find myself left to explain her “superhero feelings” to a group of confused and impatient five year olds.

When we have to leave a play date or a birthday party early because I can see her winding up and I know that if I don’t reign it in now she’ll go supernova in half an hour, I can only imagine what it looks like to other parents who don’t know us. I know what bad parenting looks like. I don’t blame their judginess. I was there once, too.

But there are other things; great, incredible, heart-rendering things. She’s brilliant and clever. Her grasp of complex metaphor and the English language is uncanny. She’s obsessed with Neil Gaiman. She navigates right to the subtle crux of literature and it smacks me in the feels every time. She’s a girl after my own heart.

Some days she’s difficult, surly, a tufty little rain cloud on our living room couch. But sometimes she’s sunlight and sparkles and she’d rather hear me tell her “a made-up story” than watch television. In those moments I love her so much I think my own Duende feelings might break through my chest. It’s so big it hurts.

Now I’m thinking a lot about this little guy.

We call him Brix Lightning. He’s a superhero that NEVER stops moving.

At this point in my pregnancy with Claire I would stand in my library, soon to be the baby’s room, and stare at my books. I’d touch the spines and wonder if she’d read them, if she’d like them as much as I did. I’d whisper that I don’t care if she’s beautiful or successful or good at crossword puzzles. Just make her smart, I ‘d beg. Make her clever. Most of all, let her love books as much as I do.

Now I stand in the spare room, soon to be a different baby’s room, and fold tiny boy clothes and wonder about Brix. I acclimate myself to spaceships and superheroes and monsters. I compile the teething-friendly board books in a stack along the windowsill. What will he want to read? All my favorite books have powerful female leads, but I’ll need to find great guys now for him. Stardust comes to mind.

I guess Neil Gaiman is for everyone.

I find myself thinking the same things. Let him be smart. Let him be funny. Let him love books as much as we do. And maybe one other thing. I find myself thinking “Let him be spirited, too”.

Spirited kids never seem to get any easier but if my experience so far has taught me anything, it’s that spirited kids just seem to get more from the world and maybe have more to give back to it. I want that for him. We all get just this one life to live, after all, and he’s living his like a boss already. I’m pretty sure he’s doing the moon walk right now.