Yesterday we babysat our niece Lorelai for a couple of hours and spent most of that time at a playground right next to Festival Hall in downtown Racine. All three of us worked up a good sweat as we tackled the monkey bars, slides, and ladders with great relish…. and Lorelai demonstrated just the right balance between fearlessness and hesitancy that you want to see in someone her age. We had a fantastic time.
Ironically, Lorelai didn’t suffer so much as a scratch in 90 minutes of frolicking on that playground – but on our way to the car, when she challenged Aunt Kathy to a little foot race, Lorelai managed to get her feet tangled in each other and she went down on that sidewalk like Humpty Dumpty falling off that you-know-what. It was a rough fall and I didn’t blame her a bit for crying- I nearly cried just from watching it happen from fifteen feet away.
I was so sorry that our niece took that nasty fall, which left her with a badly scraped knee – but it was also a neat moment for Kathy to show just how smart and caring she is when it comes to children. My inclination when such mishaps occur is to run the other way as fast as my feet will carry me…. but Kathy scooped up Lorelai without a moment’s hesitation- and let her have a few moments of crying without any attempt to shush her- just holding her, hugging her, whispering encouragement to her, and then at some point shifting ever so gently from consolation to mood- lightening. . . not trying to make Lorelai stop crying but just to get her thinking about something else. It was just masterful. And when we got to the car and Kathy buckled the still whimpering Lorelai into her car seat, she asked Lorelai if she should sit there in the back seat next to her- and the way Lorelai nodded her head, lips trembling, just broke my heart in two. That was my cue to scoop all of the books up off of the backseat so my wife could settle in right next to her niece . . . and by the time we got to the Yard Arm for lunch, it was as though Lorelai had never taken her spill. And once she’d had a band-aid applied at the restaurant (thank goodness that the Yard Arm is equipped with band-aids) she was as good as new.
I suppose I’m not reporting anything all that newsworthy here, except that I don’t have any of the gifts that Kathy has when it comes to these kind of moments. . . and I was just so glad that Lorelai had her rather than me in the wake of her nasty spill. Kathy knew just what to do and just what to say, and what gifts did I have to offer in this moment? I could rattle off a sarcastic one-liner. I could name all of the presidents in order. I could play any accompaniment to any of the 24 Italian songs in any key without the music in front of me. But none of that matters a whit when the problem is a nasty spill and a badly skinned knee. For that, you need Aunt Kathy.
pictured above: Kathy buckling Lorelai into her car seat. She was still very quietly whimpering at this point but already largely recovered. She shook it off pretty darn well- more quickly than she would have a year ago. I think this what they call Growing Up.