I read other mom blogs. I know what I'm up against. I read about women raising large numbers of children. They grow their own food, rewire their home's electrical systems, shear sheep, breastfeed while publishing cookbooks, and teach their well-scrubbed little ones the Liturgy of the Hours. I am in no way exaggerating. I have a husband, two sons, a dog and a cat. I've never grown anything I could eat. I sometimes knit, but the wool is not from my own sheep. Yes, I breastfed, but that was nearly a decade ago.
While his brother works two paid jobs this week, our 11-year-old is watching too much TV. We are in the midst of what the TV reporters (Yeah, I am watching TV, too) call an "excessive heat wave." As opposed to what? An insufficient heat wave?
Our house, more than a century old, has two AC units on the first floor and innumerable fans on the second. I walk the dog at midnight and come home covered in sweat. It's too hot to swim. L. plays both travel baseball and basketball, but practices and games are in the evenings. This leaves huge chunks of indoor time during the day with not a whole lot to do. He likes to read, but I can't expect him to do that for hours every day.
So between America's Got Talent, Dual Survival, Pawn Stars and Alphas, he is wasting a whole lot of time. And I am feeling a whole lot of guilty. This little message of our son's from the world of make-believe moved me. I might not measure up to other moms this week - or ever. But nothing can stop my son's search for Beauty.
"There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds." ~G.K. Chesterton
Post Script. 11: 20 p.m. L. explained tonight that the figure 8 in these drawings is an infinity symbol. "I was thinking that if it were an empire, it would last forever," he told me.
I think Lucky's drawings are cool. You should introduce him to Edgar Rice Burroughs and his glorious, imaginative, hero filled Barsoom Series! Bloodshed, Monsters, Honor, Savagery, True Love, Dying Cities, Flying Machines and Naked Folk Armed to the Teeth. What is not to like? Waaaay better than Green Lantern. ;)
ReplyDeleteAs I stood thus meditating, I turned my gaze from the landscape to the heavens where the myriad stars formed a gorgeous and fitting canopy for the wonders of the earthly scene. My attention was quickly riveted by a large red star close to the distant horizon. As I gazed upon it I felt a spell of overpowering fascination — it was Mars, the god of war, and for me, the fighting man, it had always held the power of irresistible enchantment. As I gazed at it on that far-gone night it seemed to call across the unthinkable void, to lure me to it, to draw me as the lodestone attracts a particle of iron.
My longing was beyond the power of opposition; I closed my eyes, stretched out my arms toward the god of my vocation and felt myself drawn with the suddenness of thought through the trackless immensity of space. There was an instant of extreme cold and utter darkness.
Thank God for Google Books!
Awesome! Kids will always find a way to do creative stuff. It's adults who've forgotten.
ReplyDeleteThanks Frank for the recommendation. Sounds like something he can look at tomorrow. Bigmuse" You said it!
ReplyDeleteYou are not a lazy mom! You are the best and only mom that your boys could have. When God thought of them, he had only you in mind :)
ReplyDeleteLove those drawings, Allison!
Dwija: Thanks for that. I hope he does more drawing, so I can do more posting!
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