Happytown

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UnknownWhen my nephew turned three, I gave him a book called The Chimpanzees of Happytown, by one of my favourite children’s authors, Giles Andreae.

It is a magical, rhyming tale of a Chimpanzee who moves to Drabsville, plants a forbidden seed and eventually transforms the entire city into a colourful, carefree Happytown.

I never knew what an apt story it was for this happy little chap, until last weekend, when he visited Melbourne town for his 10th birthday.

It was his first interstate trip as an unaccompanied minor, for two nights and an unspecified outing with his Aunt.

Melbourne being known for its gloom, we were expecting another week of rain. But by the time J got off the plane, the sun was out and the forecast had been changed.

“You brought the sun with you!” we said, not knowing how true that would turn out to be.

It was a perfect Sunday.

After a bike ride to the local skate park, where I was instructed to record every jump until he got it right…

…we took a one hour ferry ride to the city.

His exuberance at the sights was unexpected.

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“Has Dad seen this?!” J wanted to know.

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Before long, he had wrestled the camera from my hands.

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I think he hoped to do a direct transfer from his brain to Dad’s.

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We pulled up outside the Arts Centre just as my camera battery died…

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…and then we were off to see the Flying Fruit Fly Circus, a theatrical production by kids aged 8 to 18, about a girl with a circus hidden under her bed.

Following the show, filled with wonder and ice-cream, J was ready to dance all the way home to Happytown.

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Aunty Larns, have you seen the movie Dumb Ways to Die? (click the pic to see it)

Debriefing on the way to the airport the next morning, I was surprised by the vision he had of my city.

If you had asked me, I would have told you it is dark and gloomy, and everyone wears black.

That Melbourne has forgotten its roots in a drive for glamour and opulence. And other less flattering things.

But my nephew saw a city full of colour and art, nice historical buildings mixed in with interesting new ones, factories, ships and lots of different things to see and do.

He left me with a smile on my face, and a resolve to get out more and find the colour in my world.

Have a Happy Easter, everyone!

What colourful things do you have planned these holidays?

Adults are Supposed to be Brave

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If you’re lucky enough to be one of the significant adults in a child’s life, you’ve probably already discovered that your role is not exactly what you think it is.

A few months ago, I spent a day on the beach with my sister’s three kids – my Neephs.

After some time, my nephew had finally spotted a crab, and was busy explaining how I should pick it up.

“Why don’t you pick it up?” I enquire, hoping to be off the hook.

“’Cause I’m scared to,” says the little D.

“Well, then, so am I,” I say.

“But Aunty Nana, adults are supposed to be brave!”

It was a priceless opportunity, I thought, to give him a lesson in how adults aren’t always brave.

But we were there with his father, that day, and it wasn’t long before he was plucking some poor creature from the shallows and little D was giving me that look.

Great, I think, now I’ve just given him a lesson in how girls aren’t always brave!

Until that moment, it never occurred to me that our relationship was in the least bit gendered.  We were just people, fellow introverts, sharing a common fear of humans and other things that bite.

Clearly, I wasn’t the best person to be teaching him lessons about bravery 🙂

But it did lead me to question how we teach kids things.

The lesson, in fact, probably had nothing at all to do with bravery, and more to do with respecting natural boundaries.  A lesson in ‘live and let live’.  In co-existing with other creatures.

It would have been a simple lesson for a boy whose first response to others’ touch is often “Go away!”

All I had to say was “How do you think the crab would feel?” and he’d have gotten the point of empathy and kindness.

But even then, once Daddy came along to show him how it’s done, I suppose the lesson would have been that empathy and kindness is for girls. Grrrr.

Where did it all go wrong?

It used to be that Fairy Tales were the source of all things wise, where communities passed down lessons to their kids on how to coexist.

So I consulted with the Brothers Grimm, and it turns out, a little bit of healthy fear is not so bad!

Photo by samlevan courtesy stock.xchng

In “The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was”, it seems the whole village knows what it is to shudder, except for one boy.  His inability to fear is a source of great shame, and eventually, he is cast out of home.  In his mission to learn how to shudder, he encounters seven swinging corpses, and a haunted castle filled with creatures of the night, his cousin’s corpse, a beggar and some body parts.

Not knowing how to fear, he starts off being kind to all the ghoulies.  The best is when he tries to warm his cousin’s corpse.  Instead of being grateful, the cousin turns into a zombie and tries to strangle him – to which the youth retaliates in kind!

Instead of learning how to fear, the youth learns how to fight.  In the end, his ruthlessness wins him a Princess and a place in the kingdom.  It is finally up to his new wife to teach him how to shudder, which she does by throwing a bucket of cold water on him in the night.  Cold shower, anyone?

The moral of the story, according to moi, is that communal life requires the skill of knowing just a little how to fear, and of respecting your place in the scheme of things.  What’s scary is that progress, in the world outside the home, seems to depend on a foolish and callous bravado.

Photo by Karen Barefoot courtesy stock.xchng

Is this the kind of brave we want our little ones to be? I can’t help wondering what will happen when little D no longer feels okay to admit that he’s afraid.

I’m not sure what the answer is, but I’m looking forward to next week, when Brave hits our cinemas here in Oz.  Tune in then for my take on a modern tale!

In the meantime, I’m curious to know your thoughts.  Can bravery go too far? Should boys be braver than girls? How do we teach our kids empathy without making them weak?

Karma is just another word for Genes

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My first week out has been a fascinating, if overwhelming, venture into the blogosphere.  With Mother’s Day just past, the topic that stands out is mothers, children and parenting more generally.

But first, I want to dedicate this one to two bloggers who made my week:

Lynn Kelly

Lynn is an awesome lady – she was the first to comment on my blog, and her welcome was so generous and warm it made me want to keep going (instead of run away screaming back to anonymity).  She has a fantastic, quirky sense of humour and her blog on Mums’ Absent Minded Moments was hilarious.  (Note to self: since you already have those moments, DO NOT have kids – borrow someone else’s!)

It was her Blogoversary this week, too, and reading where she’s come from to now was truly inspirational.

The other was a Freshly Pressed blog by the Man of the Minivan  who wrote about the Joys of Disciplining Someone Else’s Child.  It was a totally entertaining read, and all the more refreshing because he says it how it is (Disclaimer: if you don’t like opinionated, don’t go there).  This blog obviously hit a nerve, because his post has 209 comments and counting – and he’s replied to every single one of them! He seems like a great guy, and an awesome Dad to boot.

From everything I’ve read and heard in my life, I’ve pretty much got the picture that having kids is a show-stopping, life-changing event.

For those who’ve made the decision to have them (or the decision not to do anything to stop having them), here’s the thing:

Brothers, sisters, Grans and Gramps – it affects us, too!

Here’s how I know:

There was a day, many moons ago, when a well-meaning mother in a public toilet block mistook me for my sister’s son.

I’m not sure if it was the sexy Kermit outfit….

…or the attractive haircut my sister had just given me (‘I know, I want to be a hairdresser! Let me practice…’)

Anyway, ever since then I’ve been determined to live up to the fiction that I’m adopted.

And it was all going along so well…until my sister actually had a son.

We should have sorted out our differences before that happened, but alas, Karma is just another word for Genes (coming back to bite us on the butt).

It was like the universe waited until the Sun, Moon and Rising Star were aligned exactly how they were when I was born.  Then out he popped – a few weeks overdue.

Now our family had two shy but horrifically stubborn Taureans to deal with.

Whether you believe in astrology or not, it is impossible to escape that familial connection – that uncanny ability my nephew and I have to look inside each other’s souls and know what’s there.

It’s like the time, when he was barely three, he proclaimed how “Aunty Nana’s scary.”

He said it, probably because in that moment, unlike his mother, I wasn’t buying his tantrum.

We bored into each other’s eye sockets, and then he ran away up the stairs.

And he thought HE was scared.

Having now three nephews and a niece (if only there was a single word for them, like Neephs…cute little Neephs), I’ve learned a great deal about myself.

Like the fact that my mouth has an aversion to forming actual WORDS is a genetic affliction.

It’s unnerving, the way they can look at you, and look away, and without one word just sum yours up:

Eh, phony.

I can’t blame them, really.  I’d think the same if I had to listen to me trying to make small talk.

Which is why, as a family, we are much more comfortable in silent proximity to one another, admiring the wind in the trees.

Recently, I had a birthday, and was again reminded of the connection running through our veins.  My sister’s three each drew a picture, and later, the conversation on the phone went something like this:

4 yo: ‘I dwew you LADY BIRDS!!’

6 yo: ‘I don’t wemember what I dwew…yeah, it was a TWEE HOUSE!’

Mum (for soon-to-be 8 yo): ‘He doesn’t want to talk’

And I get it.  Sometimes it’s hard to say how we feel, or to even have anything to say at all.  And that’s where Art comes in.

I write because I love my Neephs, because there are things about the world I want to share with them, because – in whatever way I can – I want their world to be a better place.

Their struggles are my struggles – to deny that connection is to deny life itself, and all the lessons that it brings.

So what about you?  Does being an Aunt, Uncle, Parent, Grandparent – any kind of child relative – scare the pants off you?  Do you see karmic patterns in those little bundled genes?  How has it rocked your world?