Caldecott books : "Prayer for a Child" (1944)

Interchanges

Daddy!! One hollered down the road - okay, from the living room 20 feet away while I was trying to drink coffee while it was hot and read a few pages of Off the Edge about flat earthers and people’s propensity to believe the ridiculous.

Yes! I hollered back.

Do you want to play Dino Smash with us? The 6-year old voice hollered. A 3-year old voice echoed this question verbatim several dozen times.

Dino Smash is not a video game.
It’s not a board game.
It’s not a branded game.

It’s a game they made up with little toy dinosaurs that they spread out over a dinosaur-looking terraformed cloth, and they take those little dinosaurs and smash them into each other and try to take the other’s favorite ones. The sounds have remained surprisingly joyful, considering the intensity of the competition, and it is my desire to not upset that fragile relational balance. Therefore, I declined the offer.

Or rather - and this is truly sad - I waited it out. I went from a holler to a mumble, and they moved on while I opened my book. I’m not proud of this. I’m the opposite. But I’m also not apologetic.

Challenges

A plumbing company is coming for maintenance on our water filtration system. It is overdue. Apparently plumbing companies are staying very busy these days, which is good for them.

We have a dreadful amount of iron in our soil. Our water comes from a well, which is why the iron content is relevant. Iron-infused water turns water orange. Orange water is not ideal for cleaning dishes, washing clothes, showering, bathing, or drinking. So we have an expensive filtration system that we are trying to keep functioning well by keeping up on the maintenance. It will probably be an expensive house call. I am not excited about the bill. I am also trying not to be apprehensive about the state of our system. I would be happy to find out that it is functioning perfectly and will continue to do so forever. I do not know if those are the precise words they will use, or ever use.

Conflicts

Coming

Triumphs

They started doing math since around 6am. It consists of them writing carefully in their little notebooks various equations, one hundred percent of which are addition problems, such as:

8 + 3 = 11

Or in the case of a 3-year old: 7 + 1 = 11.

7 + 1 does not equal 11, I told him.

He disagreed, and we went back and forth on this. He finally passive-aggressively acknowledged that I might be correct, but that he wasn’t going to change it in his notebook because he’d have to scribble over the previous equation; therefore he’d just leave it as is. So in some universes, I don’t know, maybe so. 2 + 2 could equal 5 in Stalin’s Soviet Union, right?

No reason 7+1 couldn’t equal 11 in a former - and hopefully never again - President’s America.

The solution is done, now let me tell you the problem

Daddy, for some reason,
he said,
I have peanut butter on my hands. I think it’s from my peanut butter sandwich.

That is a strong conjecture, I said. Let’s go wash your hands.

It’s okay, he assured me quickly. I already licked them clean.

Prayer for a Child by Rachel Field.

This 1944 picture book is narrated by a young girl and illustrated by Elizabeth Orton Jones. It deservedly won the Caldecott Medal in 1945.

It’s not exciting.
There’s no big drama or villains or conflict. Nothing fantastic or far out.

It’s a beautiful and simple little book in which a girl prays not just for herself, not just for her family, but prays a prayer which resonates across and around the world. It’s deeply personal and deeply universal; a reflection of childhood, but also of humanity at large in asking for help in getting through the night; a night that is both night itself and metaphor.

The rhymes are simple:

Through the darkness, through the night
Let no danger come to fright
My sleep til morning once again
Beckons at the window pane

Another spread:

Bless all the children, far and near
And keep them safe and free from fear

I appreciate how the simple format, simple words, simple illustrations are representative of a simple concept that, like many simple concepts, is powerful in its simplicity:

We are more than ourselves and we need help, so we ask for help. Help for not only ourselves, but for others. Help not only for those we know, but for those we don’t. And by speaking, the saying, the asking, the vulnerability of verbalizing these thoughts in humble prayer, they provide strength.

I don’t always know the proper amount to include our children at different ages into the world of worry, the world of ‘reality,’ the world which has starving children and endless wars and poverty and misery and…

…how do you raise children with empathy and compassion when your lives are privileged to begin with?

I have no simple or easy answers. But I do believe that we can choose to not ignore. We can choose to face on, with knowledge and awareness, with conversation and dialog, the reality that there are many worlds beyond our own still to learn about and to care about.

We can be happy and we can be afraid with our fears and figuring out how to deal with them; how to get through the night.

But we can also start with the songs and the stories and the burrowed, buried ideas that we are a connected humanity, that Jesus Loves All the Children and We Are All Children, and sometimes, sometimes,

sometimes it’s simple little children’s books from the depth of a World War decade that give memory and meaning to those ideas, those simple ideas that we can start, we can start, empathy and compassion at every age, with little prayers, with a little awareness, with a little verbalization of our vulnerabilities and fears and we can commune and communicate, regardless of where these prayers float to, these feelings we all start with as children,

and this is strength through vulnerability, compassion through dialog, connection beginning with words floated to the universe.

These are the simple ideas and simple books I want to keep returning to.

Timeless. Thank you, Rachel Field and Elizabeth Orton Jones.

Thoughts and feelings

We had a tickling session and a money counting session and a drawing session and somehow a 6-year old managed to segue these into pulling out a calculator and trying to sell me his artwork.

Then they played the board game Sorry! together. I wasn’t invited. I would have won though.

Then it was noon

That’s it?! Whaaat?! Half the day’s left?!

As Andy Samburg might say: cool cool cool cool cool.

Made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, coffee for one of us, I grabbed books and art supplies and we headed outside. I read Robert McCloskey’s One Morning in Maine while they ate. I love his illustrations, and have ever since I read my first Homer Price story around eight years old.

Challenges and conflicts

Everything went perfect. There were no hiccups or difficulties. They got along great. There was a minor squirmish involving who won a game of Dino Smash or Sorry or both, and the infamous debate over whose art was worth more, but aside from that and angry words about should have the bigger sandwich and who gave better prayers before lunch, everything went smoothly. Of course there was the thing with who got to use the rake first, and how long they should share the Lowly Worm vehicle, but those ended with very little blood or hurt hearts, so I wouldn’t even count those, or the disagreement over who jumped farther off the orange slide in the front yard. Good day.

I don’t know where this section goes

Working with my father-in-law after supper to get my mower up and going. I am appreciative for his help and time. May it be a good memory. Working on small engine fix-it kind of stuff is not something I especially enjoy on any level. I want to mow and then play. Get it done. I do not want to fix things just so I can then do the work. I know this is complaining about things that most everybody has to deal with at some point.

Small joys

We eat ice cream bars together after Countess Becca gets home.

Salad and samosa supper outside, where the best meals are eaten.

Games, play, and learnings

Making art, by the hour, inside and out. I love so much.

Riding their Flintstone-ish car and Lowly Worm car all around. They are falling apart, but the vehicles’ condition has diminished their joy in no way.