What Goes Around Comes Around
So I had one of those parenting moments yesterday
that every parent looks forward
to.
Ariel is nanny-in-charge of a 12-year-old boy for four weeks this summer. While caring for Ben she's met another family in the neighborhood with four boys who asked her to babysit yesterday.
Over dinner last night she described her action-packed day with a house full of boys, swimming, making lunch, and even playing GI Joe with them.
Having never played GI Joe before, her charges were quite good at coaching her in the appropriate battle positions and techniques. She took their advice and then added some girlish spice of her own to the game. She conjured up a convoy of "circus" tanks complete with soldiers hanging off the tanks in unnatural positions and big-top music she hummed in the background. Her strategy: kill the opposing troops with laughter. She also employed a "sex appeal" plot to paralyze, and thereby killing off with ease her opponents who were mesmerized by a beautiful female troop. (I'm guessing both of those scenarios are a first in the history of GI Joe playing among 6-10 year old boys.)
Later in the afternoon Ariel observed that the horseplay between the two youngest boys quite often deteriorated into real fights -- sort of like she and Hannah had in their younger years. She quickly put an end to the fighting and admonished the brothers by saying that they "should love each other." At the moment I heard those words, my mind darted back to earlier days in my household. And I smiled. "Sounds familiar," I said. "Yeah," she said, "I realize now how important that is. Now I understand."
And there it was.
Certainly, parenting has been the most rewarding (and most challenging) thing I've ever done. And there have been many rewarding moments over time, too numerous to count. But this one was special. It was practical evidence that my words had taken root and were bearing fruit in another life.
What goes around eventually does come around.
Here's a photo of Ariel from those younger years that my mother came across the other day. I can't resist sharing it.
Ariel is nanny-in-charge of a 12-year-old boy for four weeks this summer. While caring for Ben she's met another family in the neighborhood with four boys who asked her to babysit yesterday.
Over dinner last night she described her action-packed day with a house full of boys, swimming, making lunch, and even playing GI Joe with them.
Having never played GI Joe before, her charges were quite good at coaching her in the appropriate battle positions and techniques. She took their advice and then added some girlish spice of her own to the game. She conjured up a convoy of "circus" tanks complete with soldiers hanging off the tanks in unnatural positions and big-top music she hummed in the background. Her strategy: kill the opposing troops with laughter. She also employed a "sex appeal" plot to paralyze, and thereby killing off with ease her opponents who were mesmerized by a beautiful female troop. (I'm guessing both of those scenarios are a first in the history of GI Joe playing among 6-10 year old boys.)
Later in the afternoon Ariel observed that the horseplay between the two youngest boys quite often deteriorated into real fights -- sort of like she and Hannah had in their younger years. She quickly put an end to the fighting and admonished the brothers by saying that they "should love each other." At the moment I heard those words, my mind darted back to earlier days in my household. And I smiled. "Sounds familiar," I said. "Yeah," she said, "I realize now how important that is. Now I understand."
And there it was.
Certainly, parenting has been the most rewarding (and most challenging) thing I've ever done. And there have been many rewarding moments over time, too numerous to count. But this one was special. It was practical evidence that my words had taken root and were bearing fruit in another life.
What goes around eventually does come around.
Here's a photo of Ariel from those younger years that my mother came across the other day. I can't resist sharing it.
Posted: Fri - July 1, 2005 at 08:18 PM
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Published On: Sep 15, 2007 10:59 PM
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Published On: Sep 15, 2007 10:59 PM