Grasping Grip
On learning how to hold a pencil and the grief and joy of your children growing up.
Monday
The dining area is a mess. There are coloring books and step-by-step drawing books scattered on the rug, toys and stuffed animals too. There are bits and scraps of paper all over the table, red thread from the many times I started all over when stitching a bean bag my daughter brought home from school. “Homework” her teacher called it, and then giggled at us Waldorf parents who brag about how our kindergarteners get to play all day instead of sit at desks and get the alphabet shoved down their throats for six hours. Once I finished with sewing the bean bag, I took on the task of trying to organize our lives, printing out and cutting missing numbers from my kids’ calendar on the chalkboard using special watercolor printing paper because the calendar pdf I got from Etsy is hand painted by another culty Waldorf mom — and it looks better that way okay. I ripped April away and wrote in appointments and important dates for May in our boring grown up calendar.
We just got a new curriculum that my son’s occupational therapists have been using and recommended I try to help my son strengthen his handwriting. There have been a lot of improvements. He is still writing his name in all capital letters but those capital letters are getting straighter and more legible. So I am printing a page out of the book so I can help him practice later. I am reading through the teacher’s guide and get to the part where they explain and then provide a step by step to proper pencil grip. It says something about babies who are encouraged to feed themselves instead of being spoon fed develop better grasping grip. A series of negative thoughts burst into my mind, “I was so adamant about baby led weaning. Was that for nothing?” “Were my efforts in vain?” and then one last thought just to really hurt my feelings, “Was it for me, or for him?”
But I know that it was for him. I just wonder how and what signs I missed that could have made me realize that something was different or that he needed extra support. Most likely it is because he turned eight this past week and I am being emotional about it haha.
I am tender, because we celebrated his eighth birthday yesterday. And yesterday I looked at my sweet kid sitting on the couch and saw him there as a tiny baby. And I saw me as that first time mom eight years ago and saw Devin as a first time dad eight years ago. I used to cut his blueberries in half and mush them a little bit so he could pick them up with his first finger and thumb and then place them in his mouth. And eight years later I am adjusting his fingers on a dark blue, dry erase marker so he can write his own name — in all capital letters. And I am reading through a handwriting guide so I can help him learn how to hold a pencil, to write his name to eventually teach him to read so he can read the instructions for the DLCs he downloads for Minecraft.
The real reason why I found myself needing to write is because of that step-by-step guide on how to teach proper pencil grasp. It made me think about how as parents we are really in the thick of the present moment. Hour by hour, minute by minute and second by second forced to fully inhabit the present. And how difficult this is for parents who had whole childhoods they forced themselves to forget. Like me. Trauma really takes away that choice to be at home in your body in the present moment. I don’t know how to be present. It’s actually a huge task for me physically. Being present in my body feels like drowning sometimes. And when I do it with or for my kids it feels like time completely stops. I am adjusting my son’s fingers on a dark blue, dry erase marker so he can hold it properly, and I am adjusting his wrist and I am making sure that he writes those letters from top to bottom. Time stops. It’s just us and my hand over his as he writes. And it is eight years since the day he was born and seven years since the moment he took his first steps.
Teaching my son how to hold a pencil is teaching my body how to be present. I continue to learn with him as we navigate the best ways to help him reorient himself in his own body. It is as if we are one again, he is in my womb again, we are taking the same breath again. We are learning of our bodies together again.
When we sang happy birthday to him yesterday, something he has hated since he was a baby, he held onto his stuffed Minecraft Creeper toys and brought them to his face enough to comfort him so he could get through the song. And I have learned that if you sing it in a lower note, gentle, smooth with a slow tempo it does not trigger his sensitivity to sound as much. I lead the small group of our close family and we sang happy birthday to him like a lullaby. Like the way I used to sing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star to him when I was rocking him to sleep. Then he made a wish and blew out his number eight candle and I swallowed the knot in my throat.
And yes, all of this surfaced from my reading the Handwriting Without Tears guide on grasping grip and proper pencil grasp haha. I realized how present I was and how much time and attention it takes to be human. And how used to dissociating we as a community have been forced to be in order to cope with capitalism, this high paced society and its demands. It feels like Devin and I are always running from place to place but on Sundays and especially on birthdays, everything slows down and we can see all of the years behind us starring back at us through our children.
On Sunday, as we celebrated eight years of his life, eight years of our life together, I saw this tiny baby learning to eat, to walk and to talk. I saw a piece of my heart just growing through life. Time just slipping through my fingers.