As my maternity leave comes to a close, I look back with bittersweetness at the past couple of months. I've gotten a chance to hang out more with Baby1, and learn a little more about her as she absorbs information around her faster than a sponge around water. I also got the opportunity to learn about the new human in my life. When I've been able to think for a moment, I realize some subtle and not so subtle friction in childrearing.
Just thinking about the times when I have reached the end of my patience, especially with Baby1, I've made one discovery that I hope will help inform how I approach Baby1 in the future. When I've hit the wall with her, it has been an issue of misaligned priorities. Those times when safety is an issue, there is absolutely no question: I admonish her and make her realize that running across the street or not stopping her Carl Lewis sprint when I tell her to do so is completely out of the question. Other times, however - have they simply because I've lost touch with my childhood and am failing to see the world through her eyes?
With so many books (and just seen how very many there are!) out there written about an litany of institutionalized agendas for raising our children, are we adults just as lost about how to raise children as we are simply not in touch with the real child we once were? Just about all the books read of trying to understand the children through our eyes, but how many are written about trying to understand us through their eyes? We push our children, to adhere to our conditions, to conform to our adult world. We shape them to personify our hopes and our dreams where we've failed. We make them into puppets of our world, miniaturized caricatures of our idols. We force on them a structure that would, in scale, rival a single-handed maneuvering of the Middle East-Israeli conflict.
And just when we think they couldn't possibly perfect themselves enough to our standards, we complain that they're growing up way too fast. Seemingly, we say this more and more with each generation. Could it be that, notwithstanding extreme external factors (inordinate amount of TV, violence in the home, health issues, etc.), we're creating self-fulfilling prophecies? We could blame parents working too much and not spending enough time with the kids; overcommercialism everywhere we turn; too much exposure of kids to sex, drugs, and rock and roll too early in life; any of a litany of pop culture surrounding us today. But could it be as simple as that adults have just lost touch with the real child they once were - and that if we were to reexamine life through the eyes of our earliest childhood, that we would once again be able to be more attuned to their needs and thoughts? That if we actually bent who we were, not to what some book tells us to do, but to something that we knew at one point in our life, that we would be able to also align ourselves and better understand our children?
I don't know... but for the time being, I'm using this strategy to better understand Baby1. We'll have to see over time whether or not my idea bears weight. In the mean time, my kitchen as still be churning out food, though at times not as creative as I would like. I'm still using what I have in our freezer and fridge. Of most recent note, I baked up a pheasant that's been in our freezer for a while - S/P all over and in the cavity, tucked butter under the skin, and stuffed it with half a lemon and an onion. Roasting in the same pan as the mire poix were celery, onions, and carrots.
I baked the pheasant, and then used the roasting juices to make my port wine and blackberry sauce. Very simply - port wine, S/P, blackberries, roasting juices. Brought the mixture to a simmer, and turned the heat to low to reduce by about a half. The pheasant was, surprisingly, not terribly gamey, and the sauce paired perfectly. However, the pheasant was still somewhat dry. I'll have to continue testing the baking temperatures and times to get just the right balance for juicy meat and done-ness.
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