Synecdoche
So yesterday, I took Kit and Elsie to see Gnomeo and Juliet. It seemed to be a good thing to do at 5:30 on a Sunday after a lovely outside day and fun weekend. After a late night at a Belzer house party the night before (and early morning with kiddos in my bed) and a weekend single parenting with D on call, it seemed a good way to mark having survived until then. And it was...
I really have only the vaguest idea what happened in the movie... no, I actually have more than a vague sense as a professor of English literature... but the point is, I watched them much more so than I watched the movie. Elsie was as Elsie is: exuberant... so excited about the adventure of going to a movie and a kid's combo and a girl's movie night out... all of it. And Kit... well... it was Kit's first movie and she responded with wonder to all of it: the kid's combo with fun dip, her first taste of Sprite, the lights going down as the movie started, and the volume of the sound. I watched as raptly as she watched the movie itself as she climbed into her seat and tried to determine what to do since she couldn't weigh it down flat. I watched as she "ahhed" in wonder at the darkness. I watched as she called out in concern for "gnomeohmeoh." I watched as she diligently dipped her dip stick. I watched as she ate popcorn one piece at a time. I reminded her to sip her Sprite and held her straw out to her when she was thirsty. I watched as she responded "nummy" when she liked the taste. I watched as she asked me to hold her popcorn tray so she could get up and dance to "Crocodile Rock" and there you have it...
There is parenting in a nutshell, right? A less menacing kind of double consciousness, not negative, but intense in which my watching her watch that movie is a kind of synecdoche, an illustration in that one example, of how I now live so many moments of my life, through her, through them.
Yesterday afternoon, I watched the North American Tree-Climbing championships at Forsyth Park with some friends and the girls but I watched them watching just as intently. Riven... So there I will be, watching them climb and balance through their lives or watching their witnessing, forever, my being no longer my own, forever bearing them. How rich....
