Childhood's end
When your children grow up, you have to say goodbye to part of them -- and part of yourself.
By Gary Kamiya
Read more: Parenting, Children, Christmas, Childhood, Gary Kamiya, Opinion
Dec. 18, 2007 | I don't usually regret the fact that my children are growing up. I enjoy who they are now too much to spend much time brooding about who they used to be. But this fall my son left home to go to college, and my daughter turned 11. When you go down to dinner and there are only three people sitting at the table instead of four, you notice. And as I was putting some of my daughter's stuffed animals in storage the other day, I started thinking about childhood's end -- theirs, and my own.
Zachary's departure has made me even more acutely aware of how close Celeste is to the edge. There's no bright line marking the moment when someone ceases to be a child, but she's definitely getting close. She hasn't abandoned her childish loves: She still plays with her American Girl dolls and devours books about clans of warrior cats and watches "SpongeBob Squarepants."
She may even still believe in Santa Claus, although that's getting shaky.
The other day as we were walking down the street, she asked me, not for the first time, if Santa Claus was real. I was tempted to tell her the truth. I'm not sure that it would be that traumatic a revelation -- most of her peers have been apostates for ages. But my wife and I have an agreement not to toss Saint Nick into the Easter Bunny bin until Celeste herself does. So I said yes, Santa is real. But this year, Celeste followed up by asking pointedly why no one ever sees him, and then volunteered that it's because he's magic.
Once they start having to come up with these kind of creationist explanations, it's all over. I'd say that ornament is hanging from the tree by a very frayed thread.
Childhood is like the punctuated equilibrium theory of evolution. You go along for eons, and then one day this large new creature is in your house, drinking wine, buying condoms and kicking your ass in basketball. The changes are happening all the time and you just fail to notice them. I feel like I practically missed Zachary becoming an adult. I spent the last four years being a standard middle-aged zombie, shuffling to work and driving kids to soccer practice and waiting for the cocktail hour. They passed in an instant. But they were his high school years, blazoned and painful and wondrous.
Celeste is in one of those bursts now. It's the exploding brain show. Entirely new areas of her mind are blossoming, and you can see the still-coalescing outlines of her grown-up personality start to come into view, like a mask emerging in a vat of molten bronze. A month ago she began to patiently explain to me how to count dotted half-notes, and this is the last year I'll be able to even pretend to understand her math problems. It's only a matter of time before I'll be asking her for help with my homework. Strange new adult concepts like self-consciousness and politeness have begun to make their appearance. (Is there anything more bittersweet than the first time your formerly feral child does something genuinely polite? That moment marks the real end of innocence.) Looking at the different spot where we're going to put our Christmas tree this morning, Celeste said, "That's much better. There will be more room for presents!" Then, looking at me with a knowing little smile, she said archly, "Because for us kids, it's all about the presents."
That little moment of fledgling self-awareness reminded me of that shot in "2001: A Space Odyssey" when the ape-man throws the club exultantly into the air and it turns into a space shuttle. I close my eyes, and a wry comment from a little girl unfolds into a vision of a woman with a grown-up brain and a grown-up heart, laughing ironically at herself in a cafe.
But best of all are the conversations -- as in, we can actually have them now. I yield to no one in my goo-gooing over 4-year-old cuteness, but if I had a dollar for every time I've completely tuned out one of Celeste's monologues about the plot of some cartoon she just watched, I'd be rich. I have a Ph.D. in pretending to pay attention. But now every day I can hit the verbal ball over the net a little harder to her -- and sometimes she whacks one right past me. The game is on, and it'll last a lifetime.
Being a parent is all about loving a moving target -- it doesn't work to get fixated on changes, because if you do that, you'll miss the miraculous present. But I still confess to sometimes feeling a little melancholy these days, as we live out these last years of dolls and silly stories and big eyes full of everything and nothing.
Some of my regret is -- how shall I put this delicately -- vampiric. As I've begun crumbling into more or less picturesque, Transylvania-like ruins, I'm naturally drawn to the figure that leaps lightly over the fallen columns. She's young, I think as I sit creakily up in my earth-filled coffin. She's full of life. Surely she won't miss it if I siphon a little bit off. Hell, I've been doing it ever since she was born -- she ought to be used to it by now.
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