Post 3.5.1.0 Like vs Care

While consoling Beloved Son one night, we got to talking and I learned something.  Beloved Son was sad because he was having a visit to Grandma sprung on him because I couldn’t find another evening sitter to cover the hours of my second part-time job. 

He was sad because he and his brothers are enrolled in our city’s Rainbow Summer park program (to cover the part time day job) and they really love it.  Going to Grandma’s is nice, but Rainbow Summer has lots of kids in it and that’s better.

As I cuddled him and rocked him and talked to him, I told him that I was glad that he cared about the people he was with every day. He was glad that I knew that  that was important and said that there were even some people who cared about him. 

Rainbow Summer, which was held at every park in the city, ended last week and we are now in Rainbow Summer Extension, which is held only at our park.  The extension is a bridge between Summer and the School Year that was added for parents who use the program for sitting rather than to give their kids something to do (although the paperwork for the program says explicitly that it is not a day care program).

We’re only three days into the extension and the cross-town collection of kids don’t really know each other, yet.  Beloved Son is pleased that some of these new people care about him.

We talk about how nice it is to be cared about.  I was thinking that he felt well liked.  But he went on to talk about people who would play caroms with him even though they kept telling him rules he already knew and about a time that he had told on a boy who had peeked at him in the bathroom stall and the Yard Duty had made the peeker sit on a chair. 

I thought that he was digressing, using the talk about caring to lead into talking about other important events.  Then he said, “And there’s a girl there, and she was a big girl, and once she was carrying three big sticks, hockey sticks, by me, and she dropped one and she turned around and said “Are you all right? Did it hit you?”, and she didn’t like me!”

Whoa!  There was a difference between liking someone and caring about them and Beloved Son knew what the difference was.  And he thought caring was more important! 

Caring was the reason he didn’t want to leave.  The people who would let him play even though they thought he was too young to know the rules did it because they could see that he wanted to play and because his wanting mattered.

The Yard Duty who put the other boy on time out did it because he could see that Beloved Son was upset and because his feelings mattered.

The girl who asked if he was all right even though she didn’t like him did it because she could see that he might have been hurt and because his safety mattered.

It’s one thing to enjoy someone’s company, to like them.  It’s another thing entirely to notice someone’s needs and to act for their welfare.  It’s another thing entirely to care.  And Beloved Son prefers caring.  Beloved Son is glad that I’m glad that he cares.  Not too shabby for a seven year old. 

So we cuddled and rocked and talked and, finally, he fell asleep.  It’s still tow days ‘til the plane leaves.  Maybe a few more calls squeezed in here and there will turn up a permanent sitter and he won’t have to go.  Or maybe they won’t and he’ll have to say goodbye to some new people that he cares about and visit Grandma and Grandpa and the cat and geese and chickens.

Either way, it will be fine.  Either way, he’ll be with people who care.  And he’ll be himself, which is finer. 

Post 8.2.6.0 Current Events: Writing Group, Back from Christmas, DIL Cytology Certificate

I'm back in Stockton and at the Empresso again.  The rumor is true, it IS cold in Minnesota in the winter.  The cold and the Minnesota comments are a comment about my recent visit to Beloved Son and Daughter in Law in Rochester MN. She's taking a one year certificate class in Cytology at the Mayo Clinic. He's working from home, doing IT management for an engineering company with offices around the world.

I got a behind the classroom tour of the Mayo Clinic.  The cytology classes get to look into microscopes that are tube and mirror connected to the instructor's microscope, so that students can see what she sees, or a mirror image of it.  Each iteration reverses for the six slaves, three on each side.  Mirror, same, mirror, right and mirror, same, mirror left.

The stains used to make collected epithelial cells turns the new ones blue and the old ones pink.  They look pretty on the slide.   Suitable for fabric. 

I asked my Daughter in Law, who was giving me a tour and who was showing me a stack of slides, whether she would use such cloth for nursery curtains.  She said no.  Gave me the evil eye.  Well, not exactly evil.  The exasperated and endlessly disapproving eye.  She's had practice with it.  Has it on speed dial when she knows she'll be talking to me.  Sees it as necessary protection. 

She doesn't want to risk starting to think of me as normal.  She also doesn't want to risk me thinking that she might accept any suggestion that I might make.  Well, not ANY suggestion.  If I were to make a Normal Suggestion, she would be amiably ready to consider it.  It's not that she intends to be unreasonable or protective, it's just that my ideas are so likely to be odd, from her point of view. 

I prefer whimsical.  She prefers Dammit Woman, where do you come up with these weird things?  No offense meant.  She is pleased to be honest and upfront and spirited.  It does keep misapprehensions to a minimum.  I'm nearly used to it.

Are you crazy?  I mean, I love you dearly, but, damn.  That is some industrial grade crazy.  Normal people don't think of things like that.

She trained the middle boy to keep the apartment clean, including doing dishes more than once a day.  That is so much fun to watch that I would forgive a lot more than a loud statement of things I know that other people are often thinking.  I'm an acquired taste.  That's one of the benefits I have noticed to having children.  Children, being raised around you (general you - One), become contaminated by you (one) and for at least a handful of years think you're normal. 

As long as you don't try saying or implying that everyone else out there is abnormal and wrong, they'll tend to at least stay indulgent to your (one's) idiosyncrasies.   I've learned to appreciate that.  (I'll tell you about Parental Arbitrariness, sometime.)