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I Am A Child
Mar. 1st, 2013 05:54 pmI am a child in these hills
I am away
I am alone
I am a child in these hills
And looking for water
And looking for life
(A Child In These Hills: Jackson Browne – 1972)
If there’s a place you got to go,
I’m the one you need to know.
I’m the map!
I’m the map!
I’m the map!
If there’s a place you got to get,
I can get you there I bet.
I’m the map!
I’m the map!
I’m the map!
(I’m The Map: Dora the Explorer)
Last summer, Kathy recommended a book to me called, Some Assembly Required: A Journal of my Son’s First Son, by Anne Lamott, with her son, Sam Lamott. I had enjoyed an earlier book by Lamott called Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (see – Learning To See) and Kathy thought this one would be equally rewarding. It described Lamott’s first year experiences with, and her reflections on her first grandchild, Jax, the son of Sam Lamott, and his girlfriend, Amy Tobias. I was curious about Lamott’s perspectives on the growth and development of an infant’s first few years of life. I’d gotten some good insights into writing from her previous book, and since I was babysitting my own granddaughter, Sarah Kathleen (AKA, Nena Chula) twice a week, I saw the book as perhaps a manual of sorts. A book that might teach me something I was unaware of, or provide some tidbits of advice I could apply to my fast growing granddaughter.
However, as I progressed through the book, I grew more and more disenchanted with the narrative. Lamott spent half the time describing her conflicts with Amy, the baby’s mother, and her son, her ambivalent feelings about their not being married, and Amy’s homesickness for her family in Chicago, with the looming specter that she might take Jax and return home. The only part of the book that perked me up was a chapter labeled, “November 27, Letter to Jax on the Secret of Life”. That’s what I was looking for! I thought to myself. Here was Anne Lamott’s advice to her grandson about the Secret of Life! But even that chapter disappointed me. Anne didn’t provide a recipe or a skill that could be taught. Instead she seemed to imply that there was no secret that life was a struggle. The only help she offered was a metaphor that could never be appreciated by a child (or some adults, for that matter). However the idea of dedicating a chapter to her grandson, and attempting to offer him a lesson that would help him growing up, got me thinking. Perhaps that could be the topic of my next essay for Sarah – one in which I offered her my own answer to the Secret of Life.
Since last I wrote about Sarah six months ago (see Stairway To Heaven), a lot has changed. She has grown into a fully expressive 2-year old: a talkative, mimicking, energetic, and joyful child. She speaks in 3-4 word sentences (with an occasional Spanish word thrown in), and is quicker giving directions than taking them: “Come on, Poppy, let’s go. Vámonos!” I find it immensely entertaining discussing options with her and listening to her verbalize a choice. “Well, let me see,” she’ll begin, moving her eyes to one side, when I ask if she wants ice cream or Orange Julius as a treat. “I think ice cream is a good idea,” she’ll conclude, causing me to laugh and wonder from whom she’s picking up those phrases. Sarah repeats back everything she hears on television, videos, and from people around her. When I rise from a low-slung chair and my creaky kneels cause me to moan, “I’m getting old!” Sarah will repeat sympathetically, “Poppy old!” After watching a video of Dora the Explorer, in which Dora saved the Snow Princess from the Evil Witch, Sarah interrupted our background conversation by waving a drinking straw over her head. “I wave my magic wand”, she began, getting our attention, “and Zap!”
Actually, babysitting is a poor word to describe what I do now. I play with Sarah, or I take her places we can explore together, or where she can play on her own, while I keep close watch. She gets all my attention all the time. I have no chores or work to do while I’m with her. All my time is devoted to her, and the morning and afternoon is divided into units of activities. These activity blocks can be put in any order or sequence, depending on Sarah’s mood or interests that day, and I’m rarely in a hurry to complete them.
After her parents leave for work, I start suggesting activities, or asking her for her preferences. They vary every day. I love reading to her in the chill of the mornings, wedging her warmly in the crook of my shoulder while I hold the book in front of her. My favorite books are the ones I read to my own children when they were her age: Hop On Pop, Go Dog Go, or One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. Sarah responds the same way they did. She has learned the rhyme and meter of the stories, memorized the words, and can fill in the missing words when I pause for her response. Lately, however, she has introduced some new books that are more interesting to her, such as Dora’s First Adventure, Dora’s Super Silly Fiesta, and Dora’s Ballet Adventure.
Besides reading aloud, we also play with puzzles, blocks, Play-doh, coloring books, and drawing lines, circles and shapes on large sheets of paper with crayons and markers. I confess that my experience as a father and teacher sometimes pop up during these activities. I’ll interrupt her manipulation of the puzzle pieces to point out partial images they contain, asking her to what pieces they connect. I’ll emphasize the need for a wider base upon which to start the building of tall towers, and quiz her on colors as we draw in coloring books. Play-doh is a great vehicle for pretending to bake cookies and tortillas, or using cookie cutter instruments to make geometric shapes. We also go into the backyard to play with the hula-hoop and the playhouse, or practice catching and bumping large balls, and hitting teed-up balls with a bat. What I do all the time is talk to her. I speak regular English in compound sentences that contain as many adjectives and adverbs I can think of, while avoiding baby talk (except for words like “poopee” and “peepee”). I’ll even occasionally interject Spanish words or phrases, but the likelihood of Sarah becoming bilingual fades as I too often forget.
Sarah doesn’t watch a lot of television, so I use her favorite programs as incentives for major activities like washing, dressing, breakfast, or going out. They are great vehicles for linking together two or three activities: “I have an idea,” I explain to her. “What if we watch a little bit of Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, and then we pause to get dressed. Then we come back to finish watching the rest of Daniel Tiger before eating breakfast. What do you think of that idea, Nena?” She usually goes along with my plan without too much negotiation. More importantly these programs give me a chance to rest and think about what we can do next. Right now her favorite morning shows are Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood and Sesame Street, and Dora the Explorer before bedtime.
Preparing and eating breakfast is still my most enjoyable activity. It has grown from Sarah’s passively sitting in a high chair, watching and listening to me mix and serve her meal, to her active and vocal participation. Now she climbs and stands up on a dining room chair so she can see and reach the kitchen counter. We then begin an instructional litany of questions and answers, interrupted by the procuring of utensils and preparing the ingredients.
“What do we need first?” I begin.
“A bowl!” Sarah exclaims, pointing at a pile of plastic bowls of various sizes on the counter.
“What do we put into the plastic bowl?” I ask, handing her the larger of the containers.
“The oatmeal,” she says with determination, positioning the bowl in front of her.
“And what do we use to measure the oatmeal?” I continue.
“A measuring spoon,” she replies.
“And how many spoonfuls of oatmeal do we need?” I ask, handing her the spoon.
“Three,” she exclaims, raising the spoon in salute.
On and on we go, with more of her speech and actions involved. She measures and counts while pouring the oatmeal into the bowl. She measures and mixes the milk, and then stirs the ingredients carefully and thoughtfully.
“Mix it, Poppy!” She announces, when her attention wanes, handing me the spoon.
It’s an interactive meal from beginning to end, with a musical interlude included.
“Would you like to hear some music?” I ask, as she negotiates a spoonful of oatmeal into her mouth.
“Peter, Paul, and Mary, please,” she says, before finishing the spooning maneuver.
“Great choice!” I exclaim. “Now, let me just get the iPod out of my car,” I explain, preparing her for my temporary disappearance. “But, I’ll be right back!”
“You’ll be right back,” she repeats.
In this fashion she has already learned many Peter, Paul, and Mary songs that Kathy and I played and sang to our own children. She knows the words to It’s Raining, It’s Pouring, Puff The Magic Dragon, and Daddy’s Takin’ Us To The Zoo Tomorrow. The musical interlude lets me sing and watch Sarah as she eats, and she encourages me with her smiles, laughter, and occasional lip-synching.
My urgency about writing a new essay on Sarah arose one day in January when it struck me that the clock was ticking as to how much longer I would be babysitting. Sometime soon, Sarah would be enrolling in a 5-day a week pre-school program and become more interested in playing with youngsters her own age than with me. While the many photos I take of her may give a picture of what she looks like, and how she’s changing, and my videos can catch some funny or developmental moments, only words can really describe what she does and says. While thinking of possible essay topics, I remembered Anne Lamott’s book, and my idea of giving Sarah my own thoughts on the Secret of Life.
Musing on ways to approach this intimidating concept while driving home that afternoon, I cast my mind about for a metaphor that Sarah might understand. That’s when the image of The Map, from Dora the Explorer’s television program hit me. Dora is Sarah’s favorite television cartoon character. Sarah wore a Dora costume for Halloween this year, and her room is littered with Dora dolls and paraphernalia. Each of Dora’s adventures or challenges begins with advice from The Map, a cartoon figure that resides in Dora’s backpack. The singing Map divides, or breaks up Dora’s journey into three stops along the road. To reach a goal or destination, Dora and Boots, her monkey friend and traveling companion, must visit three sites and overcome three problems or puzzles. The first time I saw this series, I immediately saw how this format taught many practical lessons to children. It taught them problem-solving skills, the need to formulate long-range action plans, and how to divide them into smaller tasks. In effect, Dora the Explorer was teaching Sarah how to think strategically – how she could achieve a long-range goal by reducing the plan into smaller, incremental activities. That was it! I thought. The Secret of Life entailed having a plan, and dividing the plan into smaller, easier-to-complete tasks. Using Dora the Explorer’s map as my metaphor I could give Sarah some good, practical advice for life that she might understand. I was very pleased with myself. My approach combined her favorite cartoon character with a formula she was familiar with. It seemed a winner, a sure way of teaching her something useful that she could apply later in life. However, there was something about this advice that troubled me, and I couldn’t at first tell why. Thinking that I’d perhaps missed something important the first time, I reread Lamott’s passage in Some Assembly Required:
“November 27, Letter to Jax on the Secret of Life:
“Dear Jax:
“Yesterday was your first Thanksgiving, and it is time for me to impart to you the secret of life. You will go through life thinking there was a day in second grade that you must have missed, when the grown-ups came in and explained everything important to the other kids. They said: ‘Look, you’re human, you’re going to feel isolated and afraid a lot of the time, and have bad self-esteem, and feel uniquely ruined, but here is the magic phrase that will take this feeling away. It will be like a feather that will lift you out of that fear and self-consciousness every single time, all through your life.’ And then they told the magic phrase that everyone else in the world knows about and uses when feeling blue, which only you don’t know, because you were home sick the day the grown-ups told the children the way the world works.
“But there was no such day in school. No one got the instructions. That is the secret of life. Everyone is flailing around, winging it most of the time, and trying to find the way out, or through, or up, without a map. This lack of instruction manual is how most people develop compassion, and how they figure out to show up, care, help and serve, as the only way of filling up and being free. Otherwise, you grow up to be someone who needs to dominate and shame others, so no one will know that you weren’t there the day the instructions were passed out.
“I know exactly one other thing that I hope will be useful: that when electrical things stop working properly, ninety percent of the time you can fix them by unplugging the cord for two or three minutes. I’m sure there is a useful metaphor here.”
It was only in this re-reading that I realized the truth in Lamott’s advice, and my own hubris in believing that I could find the Secret of Life. My biggest error was in making The Map the central metaphor for my advice. It wasn’t so much that the cartoon program was wrong for using a map, and encouraging children to use them for reaching a goal; but I was elevating the importance of the map or a plan over the people making the journey. As I’ve gotten older, I have come to realize that the goal of life is not so much in reaching a goal or destination, but enjoying the journey. The joy of learning, growing, and experiencing the adventure of life is the journey we are on. And this perilous road through unexplored regions is best taken with people we love and trust. The wisest step Dora takes in each adventure is not when she consults a map. Checking a map is a useful practice, but the wisest steps on Dora’s journey are when she takes along a companion, enlists the help of friends, and dances and sings her way along a route that will always be dotted with detours, accidents, and problems.
The more I thought about it, the more I also preferred Lamott’s metaphor of disconnecting in order to reboot our spirits or our lives when things are not working properly. I used to do this with long solitary walks, or runs through the slopes and parks of West Hills. I could achieve the same effect when writing in my journal in the lonely pre-dawn hours. Joseph Campbell called it his “bliss station”, a place, room, or time where he could get away from everybody. “This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be,” Campbell wrote. “This is the place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen.”
There was another truth I discovered in Lamott’s book when I read it a second time. It was a quote from her son, Sam, that I had felt many times as a father, but was never able to express.
“We as parents have the illusion,” Sam Lamott wrote, “that we make our kids stronger, but they make us stronger.” I experienced that sensation with Toñito and Prisa. I couldn’t help but grow into their expectations and needs of me as a father. They made me a stronger, more thoughtful, and more compassionate human being. As I was teaching them, they were making me into a father. This is the same dynamic I see at work with Sarah and her mommy and daddy. Joe and Prisa have grown and matured along with their baby girl. I see it every morning as they speak and interact with Sarah. I hear it when they brief me on the condition of her cold and cough, how she awoke and ate, and what they’re planning on doing that afternoon together. They are no longer two newlywed youngsters experimenting with marriage. They are the custodians of a talkative, delightful, and fearless child. It’s a stressful and joyful experience that they manage to turn into play when they are together.
So in conclusion, I would have to admit to Sarah that I have no clues about the Secret of Life. All I know for sure is that I’m still on a journey through life, going somewhere – and that I’m happy to be spending two days a week with her. On those days the two of us can play, read, and sing as we prepare and eat breakfast. We can travel to parks and malls and experience adventures with playground equipment, other children, and adults. Adult itineraries and maps may help, but the joy is in being together as we go through the day.
I am away
I am alone
I am a child in these hills
And looking for water
And looking for life
(A Child In These Hills: Jackson Browne – 1972)
If there’s a place you got to go,
I’m the one you need to know.
I’m the map!
I’m the map!
I’m the map!
If there’s a place you got to get,
I can get you there I bet.
I’m the map!
I’m the map!
I’m the map!
(I’m The Map: Dora the Explorer)
Last summer, Kathy recommended a book to me called, Some Assembly Required: A Journal of my Son’s First Son, by Anne Lamott, with her son, Sam Lamott. I had enjoyed an earlier book by Lamott called Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (see – Learning To See) and Kathy thought this one would be equally rewarding. It described Lamott’s first year experiences with, and her reflections on her first grandchild, Jax, the son of Sam Lamott, and his girlfriend, Amy Tobias. I was curious about Lamott’s perspectives on the growth and development of an infant’s first few years of life. I’d gotten some good insights into writing from her previous book, and since I was babysitting my own granddaughter, Sarah Kathleen (AKA, Nena Chula) twice a week, I saw the book as perhaps a manual of sorts. A book that might teach me something I was unaware of, or provide some tidbits of advice I could apply to my fast growing granddaughter.
However, as I progressed through the book, I grew more and more disenchanted with the narrative. Lamott spent half the time describing her conflicts with Amy, the baby’s mother, and her son, her ambivalent feelings about their not being married, and Amy’s homesickness for her family in Chicago, with the looming specter that she might take Jax and return home. The only part of the book that perked me up was a chapter labeled, “November 27, Letter to Jax on the Secret of Life”. That’s what I was looking for! I thought to myself. Here was Anne Lamott’s advice to her grandson about the Secret of Life! But even that chapter disappointed me. Anne didn’t provide a recipe or a skill that could be taught. Instead she seemed to imply that there was no secret that life was a struggle. The only help she offered was a metaphor that could never be appreciated by a child (or some adults, for that matter). However the idea of dedicating a chapter to her grandson, and attempting to offer him a lesson that would help him growing up, got me thinking. Perhaps that could be the topic of my next essay for Sarah – one in which I offered her my own answer to the Secret of Life.
Since last I wrote about Sarah six months ago (see Stairway To Heaven), a lot has changed. She has grown into a fully expressive 2-year old: a talkative, mimicking, energetic, and joyful child. She speaks in 3-4 word sentences (with an occasional Spanish word thrown in), and is quicker giving directions than taking them: “Come on, Poppy, let’s go. Vámonos!” I find it immensely entertaining discussing options with her and listening to her verbalize a choice. “Well, let me see,” she’ll begin, moving her eyes to one side, when I ask if she wants ice cream or Orange Julius as a treat. “I think ice cream is a good idea,” she’ll conclude, causing me to laugh and wonder from whom she’s picking up those phrases. Sarah repeats back everything she hears on television, videos, and from people around her. When I rise from a low-slung chair and my creaky kneels cause me to moan, “I’m getting old!” Sarah will repeat sympathetically, “Poppy old!” After watching a video of Dora the Explorer, in which Dora saved the Snow Princess from the Evil Witch, Sarah interrupted our background conversation by waving a drinking straw over her head. “I wave my magic wand”, she began, getting our attention, “and Zap!”
Actually, babysitting is a poor word to describe what I do now. I play with Sarah, or I take her places we can explore together, or where she can play on her own, while I keep close watch. She gets all my attention all the time. I have no chores or work to do while I’m with her. All my time is devoted to her, and the morning and afternoon is divided into units of activities. These activity blocks can be put in any order or sequence, depending on Sarah’s mood or interests that day, and I’m rarely in a hurry to complete them.
After her parents leave for work, I start suggesting activities, or asking her for her preferences. They vary every day. I love reading to her in the chill of the mornings, wedging her warmly in the crook of my shoulder while I hold the book in front of her. My favorite books are the ones I read to my own children when they were her age: Hop On Pop, Go Dog Go, or One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. Sarah responds the same way they did. She has learned the rhyme and meter of the stories, memorized the words, and can fill in the missing words when I pause for her response. Lately, however, she has introduced some new books that are more interesting to her, such as Dora’s First Adventure, Dora’s Super Silly Fiesta, and Dora’s Ballet Adventure.
Besides reading aloud, we also play with puzzles, blocks, Play-doh, coloring books, and drawing lines, circles and shapes on large sheets of paper with crayons and markers. I confess that my experience as a father and teacher sometimes pop up during these activities. I’ll interrupt her manipulation of the puzzle pieces to point out partial images they contain, asking her to what pieces they connect. I’ll emphasize the need for a wider base upon which to start the building of tall towers, and quiz her on colors as we draw in coloring books. Play-doh is a great vehicle for pretending to bake cookies and tortillas, or using cookie cutter instruments to make geometric shapes. We also go into the backyard to play with the hula-hoop and the playhouse, or practice catching and bumping large balls, and hitting teed-up balls with a bat. What I do all the time is talk to her. I speak regular English in compound sentences that contain as many adjectives and adverbs I can think of, while avoiding baby talk (except for words like “poopee” and “peepee”). I’ll even occasionally interject Spanish words or phrases, but the likelihood of Sarah becoming bilingual fades as I too often forget.
Sarah doesn’t watch a lot of television, so I use her favorite programs as incentives for major activities like washing, dressing, breakfast, or going out. They are great vehicles for linking together two or three activities: “I have an idea,” I explain to her. “What if we watch a little bit of Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, and then we pause to get dressed. Then we come back to finish watching the rest of Daniel Tiger before eating breakfast. What do you think of that idea, Nena?” She usually goes along with my plan without too much negotiation. More importantly these programs give me a chance to rest and think about what we can do next. Right now her favorite morning shows are Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood and Sesame Street, and Dora the Explorer before bedtime.
Preparing and eating breakfast is still my most enjoyable activity. It has grown from Sarah’s passively sitting in a high chair, watching and listening to me mix and serve her meal, to her active and vocal participation. Now she climbs and stands up on a dining room chair so she can see and reach the kitchen counter. We then begin an instructional litany of questions and answers, interrupted by the procuring of utensils and preparing the ingredients.
“What do we need first?” I begin.
“A bowl!” Sarah exclaims, pointing at a pile of plastic bowls of various sizes on the counter.
“What do we put into the plastic bowl?” I ask, handing her the larger of the containers.
“The oatmeal,” she says with determination, positioning the bowl in front of her.
“And what do we use to measure the oatmeal?” I continue.
“A measuring spoon,” she replies.
“And how many spoonfuls of oatmeal do we need?” I ask, handing her the spoon.
“Three,” she exclaims, raising the spoon in salute.
On and on we go, with more of her speech and actions involved. She measures and counts while pouring the oatmeal into the bowl. She measures and mixes the milk, and then stirs the ingredients carefully and thoughtfully.
“Mix it, Poppy!” She announces, when her attention wanes, handing me the spoon.
It’s an interactive meal from beginning to end, with a musical interlude included.
“Would you like to hear some music?” I ask, as she negotiates a spoonful of oatmeal into her mouth.
“Peter, Paul, and Mary, please,” she says, before finishing the spooning maneuver.
“Great choice!” I exclaim. “Now, let me just get the iPod out of my car,” I explain, preparing her for my temporary disappearance. “But, I’ll be right back!”
“You’ll be right back,” she repeats.
In this fashion she has already learned many Peter, Paul, and Mary songs that Kathy and I played and sang to our own children. She knows the words to It’s Raining, It’s Pouring, Puff The Magic Dragon, and Daddy’s Takin’ Us To The Zoo Tomorrow. The musical interlude lets me sing and watch Sarah as she eats, and she encourages me with her smiles, laughter, and occasional lip-synching.
My urgency about writing a new essay on Sarah arose one day in January when it struck me that the clock was ticking as to how much longer I would be babysitting. Sometime soon, Sarah would be enrolling in a 5-day a week pre-school program and become more interested in playing with youngsters her own age than with me. While the many photos I take of her may give a picture of what she looks like, and how she’s changing, and my videos can catch some funny or developmental moments, only words can really describe what she does and says. While thinking of possible essay topics, I remembered Anne Lamott’s book, and my idea of giving Sarah my own thoughts on the Secret of Life.
Musing on ways to approach this intimidating concept while driving home that afternoon, I cast my mind about for a metaphor that Sarah might understand. That’s when the image of The Map, from Dora the Explorer’s television program hit me. Dora is Sarah’s favorite television cartoon character. Sarah wore a Dora costume for Halloween this year, and her room is littered with Dora dolls and paraphernalia. Each of Dora’s adventures or challenges begins with advice from The Map, a cartoon figure that resides in Dora’s backpack. The singing Map divides, or breaks up Dora’s journey into three stops along the road. To reach a goal or destination, Dora and Boots, her monkey friend and traveling companion, must visit three sites and overcome three problems or puzzles. The first time I saw this series, I immediately saw how this format taught many practical lessons to children. It taught them problem-solving skills, the need to formulate long-range action plans, and how to divide them into smaller tasks. In effect, Dora the Explorer was teaching Sarah how to think strategically – how she could achieve a long-range goal by reducing the plan into smaller, incremental activities. That was it! I thought. The Secret of Life entailed having a plan, and dividing the plan into smaller, easier-to-complete tasks. Using Dora the Explorer’s map as my metaphor I could give Sarah some good, practical advice for life that she might understand. I was very pleased with myself. My approach combined her favorite cartoon character with a formula she was familiar with. It seemed a winner, a sure way of teaching her something useful that she could apply later in life. However, there was something about this advice that troubled me, and I couldn’t at first tell why. Thinking that I’d perhaps missed something important the first time, I reread Lamott’s passage in Some Assembly Required:
“November 27, Letter to Jax on the Secret of Life:
“Dear Jax:
“Yesterday was your first Thanksgiving, and it is time for me to impart to you the secret of life. You will go through life thinking there was a day in second grade that you must have missed, when the grown-ups came in and explained everything important to the other kids. They said: ‘Look, you’re human, you’re going to feel isolated and afraid a lot of the time, and have bad self-esteem, and feel uniquely ruined, but here is the magic phrase that will take this feeling away. It will be like a feather that will lift you out of that fear and self-consciousness every single time, all through your life.’ And then they told the magic phrase that everyone else in the world knows about and uses when feeling blue, which only you don’t know, because you were home sick the day the grown-ups told the children the way the world works.
“But there was no such day in school. No one got the instructions. That is the secret of life. Everyone is flailing around, winging it most of the time, and trying to find the way out, or through, or up, without a map. This lack of instruction manual is how most people develop compassion, and how they figure out to show up, care, help and serve, as the only way of filling up and being free. Otherwise, you grow up to be someone who needs to dominate and shame others, so no one will know that you weren’t there the day the instructions were passed out.
“I know exactly one other thing that I hope will be useful: that when electrical things stop working properly, ninety percent of the time you can fix them by unplugging the cord for two or three minutes. I’m sure there is a useful metaphor here.”
It was only in this re-reading that I realized the truth in Lamott’s advice, and my own hubris in believing that I could find the Secret of Life. My biggest error was in making The Map the central metaphor for my advice. It wasn’t so much that the cartoon program was wrong for using a map, and encouraging children to use them for reaching a goal; but I was elevating the importance of the map or a plan over the people making the journey. As I’ve gotten older, I have come to realize that the goal of life is not so much in reaching a goal or destination, but enjoying the journey. The joy of learning, growing, and experiencing the adventure of life is the journey we are on. And this perilous road through unexplored regions is best taken with people we love and trust. The wisest step Dora takes in each adventure is not when she consults a map. Checking a map is a useful practice, but the wisest steps on Dora’s journey are when she takes along a companion, enlists the help of friends, and dances and sings her way along a route that will always be dotted with detours, accidents, and problems.
The more I thought about it, the more I also preferred Lamott’s metaphor of disconnecting in order to reboot our spirits or our lives when things are not working properly. I used to do this with long solitary walks, or runs through the slopes and parks of West Hills. I could achieve the same effect when writing in my journal in the lonely pre-dawn hours. Joseph Campbell called it his “bliss station”, a place, room, or time where he could get away from everybody. “This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be,” Campbell wrote. “This is the place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen.”
There was another truth I discovered in Lamott’s book when I read it a second time. It was a quote from her son, Sam, that I had felt many times as a father, but was never able to express.
“We as parents have the illusion,” Sam Lamott wrote, “that we make our kids stronger, but they make us stronger.” I experienced that sensation with Toñito and Prisa. I couldn’t help but grow into their expectations and needs of me as a father. They made me a stronger, more thoughtful, and more compassionate human being. As I was teaching them, they were making me into a father. This is the same dynamic I see at work with Sarah and her mommy and daddy. Joe and Prisa have grown and matured along with their baby girl. I see it every morning as they speak and interact with Sarah. I hear it when they brief me on the condition of her cold and cough, how she awoke and ate, and what they’re planning on doing that afternoon together. They are no longer two newlywed youngsters experimenting with marriage. They are the custodians of a talkative, delightful, and fearless child. It’s a stressful and joyful experience that they manage to turn into play when they are together.
So in conclusion, I would have to admit to Sarah that I have no clues about the Secret of Life. All I know for sure is that I’m still on a journey through life, going somewhere – and that I’m happy to be spending two days a week with her. On those days the two of us can play, read, and sing as we prepare and eat breakfast. We can travel to parks and malls and experience adventures with playground equipment, other children, and adults. Adult itineraries and maps may help, but the joy is in being together as we go through the day.
