‘Just in case…’

Assorted early Monday morning music and poetry

Le Nozze di Figaro - Mozart
Paris Concerto No. 5 - Vivaldi
Rigoletto - Verdi
Symphony No. 5 in C Minor - Beethoven
21 Hungarian Dances - Brahms

A 5-year old getting dressed and walking around singing, at various levels, Little Girls from the musical Annie

Just in case

Shall we take rubber boots today? he asked.

Well…I replied…it’s going to be dry, and I really don’t want you guys getting muddy or wet while we’re out today.

I know, he hastened to assure me, but maybe we should just in case we’re at the river and I accidentally fall in.

Let me replay that phrase again: ‘Just in case I accidentally fall in.’

I met someone several years who chastised me for using the word ‘just.’ It was a decent conversation - or rather, listened-to monologue - and it is something worth thinking about. Just what is the purpose of the word ‘just?’ Could it be removed from most sentences without diluting or weakening the communication? Arguably it frequently can be removed.

[ however, we’re greeted with a melting pile of water if we remove it from justice ]

When I look at this sentence above, used by a 5-year old, I find just an integral part of the declaration.

‘In case I fall in’
does not have the same power as
‘Just in case I fall in.’

Fall in love with words. Images and pretty pictures are beautiful and necessary and occupy a place of their own in our heads and hearts. But words and the language we form from them are the ways in which we articulate our relation with the visual and formulate our opinions and mindsets and understand our relationships with others…

…so value language. Value the power of a word. Even a simple one that might often be disposable.

Like ‘just.’

Would that No Doubt from the mid-90s be near as good minus that one word?

‘A Girl’
is a very different rhythm, feel, and message than
’Just a Girl’

Finders keepers

’Wait…’ he asked, incredulous, ‘so how did you and Mama get married? She just found you?’

I tried to explain how our relationship came to be. But seemingly solidified in his mind was the important part: his mom found me, and that’s how we ended up together.

In a sense, that sums it up. I tried reframing it as ‘…well, we found each other.’ But he strongly preferred the idea that she found me. And that will be his narrative. Maybe not his truth - a phrase I’m not a huge fan of - but it may be his narrative.

Dialogue in the wild

We ran into someone while out hiking. She was within my age range, give or take ten years, and was with a friend. I was with my younger kids; forty years my junior. She called across the trailhead parking lot, ‘hey, are our boys in class together?’

Yes, I said. Your son’s a good artist.

She has no idea whether or not my son’s a good artist too.

He is.

——

‘Aaaaahh!!!!’
he sighed and then shrieked, twirling around as he raced toward the river,

‘…this is so wonderful, I can’t believe it!’

——

Would you teach a class? I asked.

‘Yeah,’ he said, picking up a handful of sharp rocks from a deserted river tide pool.
’I’m going to teach how to draw on rocks with other rocks. Like cavemen.’

The poetry of science

‘You have to wait until bedtime for rocks to fall down,’ he explained to his three-year old brother. ‘Then they’ll fall down from the darkness above. The darkness way, way up there.’

Are you talking about deep outer space? I asked.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘The darkness way up there.’

Lunch

What would you like to have a conversation about? I asked.

‘Blood,’ he said. ‘I like blood. When I get an injury, I want to scoop it up together so I can look at it. The blood.’

Cool. I said. So maybe you might be interested in being a nurse or doctor?

‘Do nurses and doctors do things with blood?’ He asked.

Yep, they often do, I said. When people get hurt, then sometimes there’s blood all over, or they need fresh blood, or -

He interrupted. ‘Then yeah, I might be interested in being a nurse or doctor, if they help people with blood. And I would give out a hundred stickers to people who got hurt and were bloody.’

Cool. I said. I think you’d make a great doctor or nurse if you wanted.

‘Also,’ he reminded me, ‘another thing I really like to do is watch flowers grow.’

I love that. I said. I really love that.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘It would be so really cool if I could just watch a flower grow super fast.’

A sense of place

One thing I love about this kid, this 5-five year old, is his love of presentation and the experience of eating. He loves food, as does everyone in his family, but beyond that, he cherishes the experience of making it an event; of relishing and soaking in and making it pretty and memorable.

‘I finished my other food,’ he said. ‘Now I’m going to eat my peanut butter cup over on the bridge.’

Okay, I said. I’m not quite done.

‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘I can go over by myself.’

I watched him hop down from our picnic table by the forest overlooking the river, and stroll across an expanse of grass, and finally settle down 60 yards away by a little footbridge. I watched him as he sat with his legs dangling over the side and his eyes roved around and his mouth got messy messy as he carefully moved tiny morsels of a single solitary peanut butter cup from the brown wax wrapper into his mouth.

By the time I got over there, he was not yet halfway done. The remainder was neatly crumbled into melted-morsels as he slowly savored each one and gazed around.

I started to say something but my heart was melting too.

——

more Skate Park School posts below