One of the most annoying and wonderful parts of my day is the journey with the boys from our car to their school. I sling their backpacks from the front passenger seat onto their backs, and we walk the few dozen metres together but also separate: the brothers usually beside each other, one occasionally lagging back to hold my hand or tell me something, but always, at some point, with me behind them, nearly stepping on them about a hundred times.
Why must I trip over my own children? Because, of course, they are so slow. They take their precious time, stopping to scratch their butts or fix their shoes or point out someone they know (sometimes) or (more likely) a dog or it its errant poo on the ground. They notice everything except me, it seems, as I flex and curl my hands and take deep breaths because patience don’t come naturally here, and we eventually make it to the spot where I kiss them and they run onto the school grounds.
Then I take my time, creepily hiding behind a tree branch to watch them scamper off to their classrooms then emerge seconds later, reconvening on the playground.
Cognitive scientist Alexandra Horowitz made a project of walking around a city block with everything from a dog to a geologist to see what they saw. She writes, “Together, we became investigators of the ordinary, considering the block–the street and everything on it–as a living being that could be observed. In this way, the familiar becomes unfamiliar, and the old the new.”
It’s alarming how much my children teach me when I’m trying to teach them. While my attentiveness is typically self-focused, they never fail to notice the world around them: the yellow flower in the middle of the grass, the rare piece of litter, the way the wind blows a leaf across our path. The Kid analyses and draws conclusions that help him feel in control; Little Brother searches for words he can read to show off newly acquired skillz. They reveal the world to me, but more importantly, they reveal themselves.
It’s a good day when I pay attention.
And before these walks, even before the part in the car where I say a prayer over them and remind them of what is true that they can take into their day, there is the moment before we leave the house–actually, TK came up with it and now when he forgets, LB reminds him (teamwork makes the dream work)–of saying to their toys, “To be continued.”
The other day I finally heard it, and when I told TK I love that he does it, he explained, “Yeah. To be continued. It means the story is still going.”
It’s perfect timing, I guess: as I get older, and my eyes aren’t what they used to be, these two are teaching me to see all over again.