Today as I was trying to get Emerson to take a bath (which is a whole song and dance) she kept saying, “Tell me a story”.
She’s been doing this lately – asking me to tell her about things in my life before she was born. She is going through a stage that is big on repetition. So it was more like “Tell me a story, tell me a story, tell me a story”. Honestly it’s a lot of pressure sometimes to think of something to say. She doesn’t like it when I haul out the same old tidbit. So I finally said, “If you’ll get in the bathtub I’ll try and think of a story to tell you”.
Developmentally she’s in a stage that is obsessed with repetition and classification. Arranging friends by their favorite color, shortest to tallest, religious orientation, whose parents live together and whose don’t. The classification I’m down with. I’m a librarian after all. I know she’s trying to make sense of the world, and I just try to remind her about context every once in a while – that there are different frameworks or circumstances for things. I’m unclear what purpose the repetition serves except to drive me crazy. Seriously, it’s like nails on a chalkboard to me. I’m trying my best.
We marched upstairs and I began to run the bathwater and add bubbles and she started in with the “Tell me a story”. And then it just happened after one more plea, I said, “Ok do you really want to know something about me that I’ve never told you before”? And then, “Well, did you know I was divorced”? She was staring right at me for a very long quiet moment. But on the other hand, a look crept into her face — one that looked like the cat who ate the canary. I said, “Well, I was”.
I’ve often wondered how this would go down, and here it was. “It happened before I ever met daddy and before I ever knew I would have you. And I’m glad I got a divorce too, because it means I got to meet Liam and have you for my daughter”.
Emerson is always coming home and telling me things about her kindergarten teacher. The other day with a look of total admiration on her face she said, “There are so many unusual things about Mrs. Lemon”.
I wonder if she finds this news about me “unusual” and if it will make it’s way to the playground tomorrow?
I was prepared to answer any questions she had, but the topic quickly changed to –Did I know that all the plastic dinosaurs in her bathtub happened to be Jewish? (Remember: another obsession lately – religious affiliations)
But later in the afternoon, as she and I were tooling around in the car, she asked from the back seat what my husband’s name had been. When I told her, she said, “That is a funny name”, and we laughed about it.
Not taboo, not a mystery, just part of moving down the road.
Tags: divorce, Emerson, marriage, repetition, storytelling
I started telling my kids about my ex-marriage when they were REALLY young (like two) and I have to say that their interest in this mystery fellow lasted well longer than the marriage did. Like four times as long!
Just in case I’ve gone more than like, I don’t know, 5 minutes since I said this last: I love your words and your stories. This is just a beautiful story. And one of myriad reasons why the children rock socks.
I agree with Brad, but I wanted to hear the story too!