They have a few things in common, my sons. There were a couple of years there when backyard baseball, MLB Showdown, and Magic cards were mutually beloved pastimes. They both recall the same antipathy toward a certain elementary school Spanish teacher. They share a passion for music, and sometimes, after dinner, Jack will tune up his guitar and they will play jazz together. They are big on Jon Stewart (the two of them will sit at breakfast, the laptop open between them, watching last night’s Daily Show as they eat their cereal). They love “House,” the Beatles, President Obama, our dog Gracie, pancakes, the Peanut Blaster at Dairy Queen, the state of Maine. They hold a reverence for tradition, adore their little cousins, and look forward to big family dinners. At this moment, I’m pretty sure that Jason Mraz’s “I’m Yours” is the most-played song on both of their iPods.
But the thing that still amazes me most about the two human beings I gave birth to twenty and seventeen years ago is how different they are. It’s as if the God of Parenthood set out to see how wildly diverse he could be within one gene pool — and fully succeeded in the effort to create two opposite-ends of the spectrum guys. As one of their early babysitters, a sweet young Hungarian girl, once said after a long night of trying to accommodate two utterly different agendas and temperaments, “Take these two little boys, put them in a pot, stir them both together, then you have a reasonable child.”
And yet, for years our family life was all about trying to make things work for both of them. We shared a house, a life, a schedule, and somehow we needed to get to the baseball games and the piano recitals, come up with one homemade Halloween costume and buy one gross-out scary mask, kiss one boy goodnight before he conked out in his bed and produce a multi-chapter goodnight saga for the other, give up on the idea of hand-me-down clothes in order to allow each to pursue his own particular style. (You can’t ask the boy who wants to wear bright orange to dress in his older brother’s sage green castoffs.)
It’s easier now. They’ve grown up, gotten drivers’ licenses, attend different schools in different states, and increasingly live their own lives. But I do kind of miss the old negotiations and the juggling, not to mention the variety of our days. Henry and Jack, together, were a spicy mix. Raising them, living with them, wasn’t always easy but it was always interesting. Being their parents stretched us, in ways I’m not sure I fully appreciated in the moment, when I was being asked to test out yet another original board game created by Jack, or to attend one more puppet show produced by Henry in the bedroom. But now, looking back, I realize that the activities they poured their hearts into when they were very young were the precursors of their passions today.
Jack would spend hours painstakingly making masks, inventing playing cards, drawing whacky animated figures on tiny pieces of paper to make a flip book. A few weeks ago, he emailed me his first animation project.
Henry conducted symphonies behind closed doors, a chopstick in his hand, his tape player turned as loud as it would go. He would corral the neighborhood kids to perform in his musical productions, put together notebooks of his favorite show tunes, envision musical revues. The other night he carried his laptop into my bedroom, to play me a recording of a song he performed last month at a school concert, the only jazz number in an evening of classical music.
I was talking on the phone yesterday with my friend Carole. Our children, exactly the same age, grew up together. I remember her Alex at ten, masterminding the construction of a K’Nex ball machine in our playroom. Today he’s a computer science major at Princeton, creating a computer game that he intends to sell this summer. “Isn’t it amazing,” I said, “that our kids are so capable? That they have totally surpassed us in so many ways, doing exactly the things that, given who they are, we would have expected them to do?”
Carole admitted that, when it comes to math, Alex has been out of her league since he was in eighth grade. But she knew what I meant. Our grown children are just coming into themselves, stepping up and finally beginning to realize those ambitions that first took shape years ago, in the long, dream-filled hours of childhood.
I have to say, being a witness to this process of claiming and becoming is turning out to be one of the high points of parenthood. And since I’m a mom, and this is what moms do, I’m sharing what my boys are up to these days with you. Click here for Henry’s song “Blue Sky” and here for Jack’s Bubbling Mud animation. And pay attention to the messes your own children are making, and how they spend their time when there’s nothing much to do: you may be catching glimpses of their futures.
Oh, I love these stories. First, I agree that one of the major tasks is to recognize and honor the uniqueness of each child, even when – maybe especially when – it puts them into conflict with their sibling, or creates different needs from the ones we may have assumed. I didn’t believe the way that each child is just him or herself from the very beginning until I had my second child, who was so utterly different in so many ways from his sister.
And I love hearing how your sons’ early interests have, in retrospect, shown to have been predictive of where they sre now. I look at my two, what they love, what they gravitate towards, and wonder what the tea leaves show. I am fairly sure that Whit is an engineer – like your friend’s son, he is all about K NEX and Lego and the like and as far as I can tell he is far more comfortable thinking in 3D than in 2. Grace, I don’t know. I worry a bit that as a capable child with a strong interest in pleasing others, she may lose sight, as I did, of her internal compass and true passions. I hope I can help her avoid that, though I’m not entirely sure how.
Preaching to the choir here. 🙂
Our first two were very different yet very mellow as babies. I always say God gave me the second two so I would be compassionate to mommies with higher strung babies. The fussiness of the fourth one cured any dream of having just one more.
Loved the samplings of your boys’ work. Henry has an amazing website. Do you go there and think, "Who is this grown up man?" Very professional. And because my boys make stop action movies with their lego guys I couldn’t help but love Jacks animation. I have no idea how they do that but am sure my boys do. Loved the sound effects of the mud dripping.
As Lindsey commented, I sometimes wonder if my more reserved kids will find their true way or if they will fumble around a bit, like I did. Guess it’s all part of the process sometimes.
Love this post. Keeps me optimistic as we get daughter into college in six months and son on the path there in 18. I do wonder where they will end up in six to eight years…
judy
justonefoot.blogspot.com
I’m expecting my first child, and I often think about how different he or she will inevitably be from my husband and I (and how a second child could potentially be so different from the first). And I also think about how those early preferences might be some indicator of the person they will become. In my work as a career counselor, I have often asked clients, "What did you enjoy doing when you were young? What did you want to be when you grew up?" Often, there is some vestige of that young self in what they want their lives to look like as adults. It’s amazing, isn’t it? We grow to be so different, and yet so the same. Great topic!
I can relate to the contrasts as I see them in my own kids. I think that we have one kid and we think we know about kids until we introduce a second child and we realize how different they are from each other. It sounds like your kids are very passionate… even if in different ways. It brings to mind a friend’s son who studied music in college and later realized that his musicality would best be expressed through architecture… and thus he’s off to study that at a great school (and while we didn’t see this one coming, the foundation of integrated learning and exploration going back to kindergarten allows it to make perfect sense, once it’s right out there in front of our faces).
As the mom of 3 boys over an 8 year span – I can relate very well to the challenges of juggling multiple boys and various interests. It was exhausting but also exciting. I’m still in it with a 16 1/2 year old, strong willed son at home…. but soon I’ll be able to step back and reflect a bit more when the ‘dust settles’. I do miss the days of having 3 little ones under our roof!! Blessings to you!
The comments here always expand my thinking further. Certainly as we got a sense of our firstborn’s personality, we took complete responsibility for who he was. It was all about US. Until the second one arrived, and we realized it wasn’t about us at all. They are who they are, and they grow up in spite of us to do what they will do. I highly recommend my friend Karen Miller’s blog today–she lets all of us parents off the hook. http://www.karenmaezenmiller.com/blog
My children are eight and ten so in some ways still coming into their own. This post reminds me to as you say pay attention to how they spend their free moments. My son, the oldest, spends hours creating elaborate creations from Lego. My daughter, the youngest, cleans and organizes singing as she goes. Perhaps one day she will be a life coach as she also has an amazing amount of charisma. Only time will tell. Thank you for this post reminding us to not only honor each of our children as seperate beings but also to keep their lives simple enough to allow them that free time to explore.
Oh, my, thank you so much for this lovely story. I’m a little worried, though… will there be a market for train engineers (steam engine only, please) in another 20 years? That seems to be where my 6-year old is headed. My little guy is safe – all I have to do is find him a nice vacuum cleaner store that needs a young, upstart repair man. "Is that a Hoover? Where’s the Shop Vac? Do we have a Mighty Mite in this house?" I know you didn’t mean it quite this literally, Katrina, but the thought does give me a chuckle. In so many ways, they do seem so fully themselves from their very first day. Thanks so much, as usual, for your wonderful story.