parenting, Beaches style
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-eight years and a million words
Toronto, 2012.02.12
Once in a while I worry that I don't always do or say the best thing while in parent mode; sometimes I'm reassured.
An hour ago, I heard a mother tell her spirit-flagging child at the tobaggon hill, "You're tired? I shouldn't have brought you here. You're making me look bad." The kid said nothing. Fifteen minutes later, as we left, she told the child (a girl, I think, but pretty bundled up and of course still silent). "Just sit there behind that tree where you won't get in the way." The child sullenly sat there with an expensive sled and a snowboard, too, but no one around her. She must have been about six.