Mommy, how can I keep my feet on the ground and my head in the clouds? I wrote those words in high school, as part of an assignment to write a group of poems about my body. It was a wonderful, challenging assignment, but when I got to my feet, all I could think about was the tension I felt between imagination and practicality.My parents understood. They teased me a little about being a dreamer, but it was something they cultivated. At the same time, though, they carried a big burden for teaching me things like responsibility, practicality, and looking where I was going. My mother likes to tell the story of when I was three and discovered my first ladybug—how I watched it endlessly, examining it, exclaiming over it, completely absorbed in this tiny detail. She also likes to tell about when I was four and in the hospital because of an asthma attack—how when the doctor asked me if I was having trouble breathing I answered, between gasps for air, “No.” Some things I notice well, other things—one of which is apparently breathing—can completely escape me.
How do you raise a dreamer? Here I am, raising three of them, and I don’t entirely know. A lot of what I’m doing here with this blog is trying to figure that out. I’m not sure any of us in this family were entirely made for practicality, but there are survival issues, aren’t there? I remember watching Oldest put on his socks when he was five or six. The task was made especially challenging by the fact that he was busy hitting all the notes to “Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen” at the same time. (The version he was familiar with, by the way, was a bit less scary than the one in the link, but the singing wasn't nearly as amazing.) Which of those two skills do you think I end up focusing on when we’re trying to get out the door to get someplace on time? I struggle with patience, quite often right at the points where dreaminess and practicality meet. It seems like I most often fall short at the point where I should be the most understanding.
I recently finished reading The Dreamer
, by Pam Muñoz Ryan, illustrated by Peter Sís. I connected with it both as a dreamer and as a parent. It is a beautifully-written, fictionalized account of Pablo Neruda’s childhood. His childhood name is Neftalí Reyes, and he is a quiet, fragile boy full of dreams and entranced with words. He collects words on slips of paper in his dresser drawer. He collects objects, too: pinecones, stones, shells. He has a gift for writing, but stutters when he tries to speak. And he has a father who wants to drive all the dreaminess out of him so he can be strong, and become a doctor or successful businessman. With the nurturing of his stepmother, his uncle, and a librarian in a small seaside town, however, he finds his strength within his dreams, and the ground is laid for his future work.Stories with parents like Neftalí’s father distress me, partly because he is so harsh in dealing with his artistic son, and partly because I recognize the fear that drives his harshness. Do I dare admit how many mistakes I’ve made, myself, that were driven by fear? How often I can swing from feeling like everything’s going beautifully to being sure that I’m not good enough, my kids aren’t good enough, that we are all, in fact, headed for disaster due to the fact that we are all of us too busy pondering life, or singing, or thinking poetic thoughts to put on our socks quickly enough to get someplace on time?
Author Pam Muñoz Ryan poses the question, in the middle of the chapter titled, “Forest,” “Which is sharper? The hatchet that cuts down dreams? Or the scythe that clears a path for another?” Neftalí’s brother Rodolfo wants to be a singer, but their father stands in opposition to this dream, as well. Rodolfo eventually bends to his father’s will, but Neftalí grows stronger—partly in opposition to his father and partly because he cannot seem to deny who he is. As the reader, my heart was with Neftalí all the way, but the father touched me, too, strengthening my resolve about the kind of parent I aspire to be. I was glad for this book. It was truly beautiful, even as (or maybe because) it brought to the surface some all-too-familiar struggles.
