"Pretty-lookin' People"

My daughter, who is "terrified" by thunder, other loud noises, and many other minor things in nature, has no fear of people. On the one hand, this is rather nice; on the other hand, it makes things difficult for me as a parent. The other day, we started on a walk and remembered we needed to go back up to the apartment for something. There was some activity going on at the banquet hall across from our apartment, and a group of men were standing by the trash cans immediately across from our door. My daughter wanted me to go back upstairs by myself and leave her down on the sidewalk, but I insisted she accompany me inside. This led to a bit of a tantrum and long debate over "What's wrong with PEOPLE!? They're not going to KILL me! And if they try to tie me up, I will just run away!" I never said anything about them killing her or tying her up, and I had to admit that probably they were fine people and would not want to do any of that. But I still did not feel it was particularly safe to leave an 8-year-old girl unattended on the curb where I couldn't see her when strange men were hanging about.

I was still wondering where I got MY sense that people were dangerous from, when a friend informed me that yesterday was the anniversary of the ambush of Bonnie and Clyde. Suddenly I was six years old, walking with my father through a portable exhibit which included the "Bonnie and Clyde Death Car," with 160 bullet holes and blood-stained upholstery. My Dad was an auto mechanic and car enthusiast, and the Warren Beatty/Faye Dunaway film had been recently released, so Bonnie and Clyde were all over the pop-culture scene of the time. I knew that the couple were bad people ("the devil's children" in the words of the popular song), but I'm not sure I felt a whole lot better about the posse that had inflicted such a barrage of death, or about the people who made money off the exhibit. Overall, it certainly gave me a negative impression of "PEOPLE." But I wouldn't want to share that with my daughter.

So, how does one instill in one's child a balance of fear and trust of strangers? I'm still working on that one...

P.S. The "Death Car" apparently is still being exhibited in various casinos in Nevada.

"And There Was Evening, And There Was Morning..."

"There were a lot of times I had to turn my light out when I was acting out Bible stories," my daughter informed me the other day. "First there was the plague of darkness in Egypt, then there was Daniel in the lion's den, then when I did Jonah in the whale, cuz of course it was dark in there, and then when Jesus was in the tomb before he rose again. Then I had the light off just now because I was doing Revelation and John was in prison."

"And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night." And so it has been from the beginning.

I'm glad that my daughter appreciates the difference between light and darkness. I'm delighted that she enjoys acting out Bible stories during her play time, and I'm impressed at her memory and sense of the flow of the sacred story. I'm glad she didn't trip and hurt herself playing in the dark, and I'm glad I wasn't the one who walked in to find her lying still on the ground with her head under the bed.

"Honey, are you all right?" my wife asked.

"I'm PRETENDING to be dead."

"Why are you doing that?"

"I was acting out Bible stories and I was being Goliath!"

Of Bradley and Broccoli

Some of the best "character bits" in fiction are inspired by observing real-life exchanges. Sitting in a local restuarant with my family over the weekend, I overheard a conversation--or rather, a monolog--which I would love to draw on if I were writing a play about sibling rivalry or family estrangement. Behind me was a young father with his two children, a 2-year-old girl with light curls in a high chair at the end of the table, and a dark haired boy of about 8 (wearing a dark expression) in the opposite booth.

They caught my attention when I overheard the father suddenly gush, "Did you say 'BROCCOLI'? Did you HEAR that, Bradley? She said 'BROCCOLI'! Wasn't that PRECIOUS? Say it again, dear! ...YES! That is BROCC-O-LI! ...Do you LIKE that BROCCOLI? ...Does it taste GOOD! ...No? Do you want to put that BROCCOLI in Bradley's HAIR? Isn't that CUTE?! Oh, DON'T make a face like that, Bradley--she isn't HURTING you! What am I DOING? I'm calling GRANDMA on my CELL PHONE! Yes I AM! And then you can say 'BROCCOLI' for GRANDMA! Mom! Hi! Guess what your granddaughter just did? ...No, she just said, 'broccoli'! ...No, 'BROCCOLI'. REALLY! Listen! Go ahead, dear! Say it! Say, 'BROCCOLI'! Say it! 'BROCC-O-LI'! Go ahead! You can do it! ..."

[I'm tempted here to lapse into a Bill Cosby routine: "Eight hours later: 'Hang in there, Mom! Drink some coffee, walk around! Come on, Erica, say "Hello"!' Wouldn't do it! Finally hung up the phone, and as soon as I did, she started, 'HELLO! HELLO! HELLO!' THAT'S my girl..."]

In the restaurant, though, all I could think about was Bradley five or ten years from now in therapy discussing why he never felt loved or accepted by his father, and why he has troubles in his relationships with women, his sister in particular.

So much of family strife and an individual's struggle with identity begins early in life with parents who just aren't aware of the messages they are communicating. While on the one level I found this Dad's enthusiasm with his daughter's expanding vocabulary goofy and endearing, I think there was definitely some potential damage being done in the relationship between father and son. And as a parent I need to heed the lesson of keeping my enthusiasm and obsessions in check where they might unwittingly harm my relationship with my child.

If I were to draw on this experience creatively, I might use it in the opening scene to a play dealing with adult siblings trying to wrestle with the brokenness in their relationships with each other and with their parents. They could meet in a restaurant, where this scene was taking place in the background, offering comic relief but also reinforcing and maybe shedding some light on how family relationships break down in the first place. [Shades of the Logician in Eugene Ionesco's Rhinoceros...]

"I Just Want to Be a Sheep"

Tomorrow is our Christmas pageant, and once again I have been asked to direct (after the upper-level Sunday School class decided on a script and casting). And once again we have integrated the younger classes' performance of a traditional pageant into the larger production. Last year we had an odd detective/time travel piece, which involved the main character actually interviewing Mary and Joseph, but this year the older kids are doing an adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's story of the shoemaker who is told Jesus will visit him, only to have the Lord show up in the poor people he helps throughout the day. The pageant only happens in his mind as he reads the Gospel story, so there is no need for any of the biblical characters to speak.

One five-year-old girl in our church we knew had been pining for the role of Mary, and this situation made it possible for us to offer it to her. We were excited about it, her parents were excited about it, and we were certain she would be excited about it, but when her Dad told her she could be the mother of Jesus, she surprised him by saying, "I think I'd rather just be a sheep." She's since changed her mind and will be appearing as Mary tomorrow (if all goes well and stage-fright doesn't strike again), but it got me and my wife thinking, "What if Gabriel had gotten that response?"

"Hail, highly favored one! The Spirit of the Lord will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you, and the holy one to be born of you will be called the Son of God!"

"Nah, thanks anyways, but I think I'd rather just be a sheep!"

Since God knows the end from the beginning, and knows our response before he makes an offer, it seems unlikely he sent Gabriel to other girls, but if he had, how many would have turned him down? How many would have turned down the role of Theotokos just to keep their ordinary lives and forgo the attention, the notoriety, the misunderstanding and the sorrow of being the mother of Jesus.

She must have been a very special girl!