Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Learning to Fly



Today I began teaching my 4th child to ride a bike. I've been through this three times, and it really brings back memories. Two of mine learned on the same grassy hill that led down to the park in California. Gogo trained on the hill here in our yard. Was it only last spring that he learned? And now The Prawn is ready. She did GREAT! Like all kids, she's somewhat prone to panicking, throwing up her hands when an obstacle comes into view, and putting her leg down way too early, but on her first day trying she had several successful runs, one where she was actually pedaling well beyond the momentum imparted by the hill. Every crash ended by her shouting, "I'm OK!" and there were several runs that did NOT end in crashes. Go Prawn! :-)

It's Band-Aid season again. After Prawn's bath, I attended to various (non-bicycle-related) cuts.



Upon which she uttered, "Look! They Rhyme!"

Spring brings on the desire to ditch the old and spiff everything up. We attacked Mollusc's room with a vengeance yesterday. Emmett heard us vacuuming and came to "help."



Since some of y'all like food pics, here's the fudge I made on Sunday. It's gone already. :-P



I held a 5 week old baby today. I haven't held a baby that young in a long time. His mother is 17 and his father is 18 or 19. Sex ed, let's face it, is worthless. They both knew ALL of the options and chose not to use ANY of them. I hate to say it, but the parents are both losers from a legacy of loser families - her father's a drunk, her mother a person who actually fell for the email saying if you send a guy in Nigeria $3,000 he'll transfer $100,000 into your acct and let you keep a percentage. His mother was killed by her boyfriend, his grandparents also killed by one of his mother's boyfriends (not sure if the same one or not) his father is in prison for molesting him and many other kids. It breaks my heart to look at this little baby - so perfect, with the potential to be absolutely anything - and to know that he's doomed, doomed to follow in his parents' footsteps, to be white trash with no education, no sense of what a family should be, no parents who will make him a priority in their lives and love him the way he needs to be loved; to know that he'll be just like all my friends in my old neighbourhood when we first moved back to the US - snotty-nosed little ragamuffins that were always afoul of the law, all of whom ended up in Juvie by the time they were 12. To look at this beautiful, perfect baby - a clean slate - and to know the fate that awaits him just sucks. And still I hope for a better future for him, even though there is absolutely no grounds for doing so.

And on that happy note, I bid you adieu.

22 comments:

C said...

PS - sorry to be such a judgmental bitch. :-P

N said...

statistics suck... although every so often they're confounded by some obstinate little napoleon. can only hope, i guess.

Logophile said...

Here's hopin' the slate ends up defying the odds and doing whatever he dreams.
Hope springs eternal...

N said...

and oh yeah...

GO PRAWN!!!

Faltenin said...

GG Prawn!

On a "let's make fun of Fal" note, they way you've coloured those "him" and "her" words made me think you had linked to their blog or photo, to complete humiliation. Duh.

Jay said...

I hope that baby escapes his fate.

For some reason, my parents thought that us kids should teach ourselves the bike riding thing - and on pavement and gravel, no less. I still have rocks inside my knees.

Anonymous said...

It took me forever to learn to ride a non-training-wheeled bike. So much for my parents' participation. I eventually taught myself.

The baby story really breaks my heart, but I know it happens all the time.

C said...

Kitkat - another bicycle auto-didact? Wow! I guess I was lucky to have my dad teach me!

Mollusc's trick was to jump clear of the soon-to-be wreckage any time she was about to crash. She was surprisingly good at it.

It's true - the baby thing happens way too much. Knowing one has just made it more personal I guess. How sucky.

C said...

Niel - It never hurts to hope, does it?

Jack - I should really try to do that for her! What a difference it could make. And also to use the Force to MOVE the obstacles out of her path! Although it would still require removing at least one hand from the handlebars, so maybe not. . .

You know, that makes sense about the fudge, cuz it tasted Heavenly. Ark ark!!

Logo - Hope - maybe that's what makes us human. :-)

Fal - Sorry to fool you. I was trying to make it a little less confusing by colour-coding his and her family "attributes" but I think I made it more confusing. What a judgmental AND humiliating bitch, LOL!

Miss Jay - Who knows? Maybe he will find a way to break the cycle.

OUCH! Rocks in your knees?!?!? Grassy hills are definitely kinder. Ack!

Sheila Shigley said...

Maybe he'll surprise us all - after all he has a bunch of people thinking about him now and hoping for the best. The hilarious and not-so-hilarious thing is that his parents are children themselves and actually young enough to still be malleable - I suppose we should hope somone influences them, too!

Remember little Mike T. from East Bluff - that little urchin graduated with honors....

C said...

It would be nice if they were still malleable. Sadly they BOTH have the attitude so prevalent in MI of "everyone owes me." They don't want to help themselves. They only want to complain and try to get a free ride. A is trying so hard to help them (she's watching the baby for free among other things), but she's becoming frustrated with their utter lack of motivaiton. Neither wants to be responsible, hold a job, blah blah, blah. It's much easier for him to carp about the "economy" and turn a blind eye to all the "help wanted" signs so he can go play pwith BB guns with his friends until 2 am. At least she is finishing high school.

C said...

Are you sure you had the right Mike? That still blows me away.

Anonymous said...

Here's to the little bug breaking the chain.

Fal clicking on the her and his made me giggle.

Yay to Prawn's bike riding. I was reminded of when my friend & I taught my brother to ride. I had a wee bike that they didn't have then (now those little things are all over the place) and my brother who was probably four wanted to learn. So he climbed on with ease (big bastard...harrumph) and we pointed him down the hill (it's not that bike), pushed him down and yelled at him to "Peddle!!" It didn't take him long to get those legs churning as he zoomed down the hill. I'm a great big sister.

Toby said...

Wow, from cute and humorous to pathetic and sad.

Go Prawn!

Toby said...

How could I forget the fudge! From cute and humorous to pathetic and sad with a fudge break in between.

jlmack said...

Oh my god, the priest at one of the international schools in Kobe gave that Nigerian scam $400,000 of the SCHOOL'S money 2 years ago.
Yeah, they shipped him back to USA ASAP.
I know what you mean about sex ed not working.
It's heartbreaking to see.

Karen Little said...

You have the most beautiful daughter! And the fudge looks divine...

Everyone's judgemental - it's human nature. We have to be in order to survive. Con't be too hard on yourself...

tshsmom said...

You're not being judgemental, Candace; you're telling the painful truth.

Dysfunctional families are usually a never-ending cycle. My husband is the only one in his dysfunctional family who married "outside the cycle". His family is full of tragedies like the one you described.

I, too, have held far too many babies born to an inevitable life of woe. Most of the teen mothers I've known have deliberately gotten pregnant. They think they will magically have a loving family with Mommy, Daddy, and baby. They usually wind up in poverty, with a tiny human being to raise on their own, and NO CLUE how to accomplish this.

Trundling Grunt said...

Ok, I fell for the bogus links as well. Hrumph.

I know what you mean about the odds for that poor kid. While you hope beyond hope they break the mould, the realistic part of you knows the odds are long. Let's just hope... but falling for the Nigerian scam is not encouraging (always wondered who fell for that. A friend of mine got an interesting variation where he was being encouraged to invest in a shipment of dried whale penises).

Reading about Prawn reminded me of our - large local park with a steep hill. Go Prawn.

C said...

Jenna, what a GREAT big sis (if, indeed, you were not attempting to send him down the hill to his death! just kidding, of course ;-) )

Toby, I thought I would bolster everyone with a fudge break before the heavy stuff. ;-)

Jai - OMG that's AWFUL!!! $400,000!!! Holy crap!!

Karen, thank you! I think she's darling, too, but I'm VERY biased, LOL!


TSmom, painful truths suck. HUGE, enormous kudos to your dh for breaking the chain!!!!

TG - Sorry about that. Ack!

Dried WHALE PENISES?!?!?! WTH?? LOL!

Do Kwang said...

Ooh shucks, cleaning your cat with the vacuum cleaner? Hope you don't try that with the hamster!

C said...

LOL! Now that would be disasterous!