A Return to Crap...Snow falling on Concrete...

The brilliance that is my progeny:
I had just gotten out of the shower when Isobel flung open the door.
Izzy: "Daddy, I want to tell you something that doesn't matter."
Daddy:"What? You want to what?"
Izzy: "When you are wearing pants, THEN you have clothes on."
Daddy: "What? I don't understand what you are talking about."
Izzy: "Never mind, it doesn't matter."




"Daddy," she started to ask me last week. "Is crap a bad word?"
"No," I said. "I don't think crap is a bad word."
"Even for me?" she asked.
"Even for you." I said.
"My teacher said I shouldn't say crap because it's a bad word."
"Well," I began. "What's O.K. at home isn't always O.K. at school and if your teacher says you can't say crap, then you can't say crap at school. I don't care if you say crap at home. It's O.K. here at home."
"That's good," she said "I've gone back to saying crap, you know."
A few days later Isobel insisted on wearing a tank top under a sweater to school one day. In the middle of a nasty December cold snap. Both Mrs. Narrator and I told her how cold it was outside and how cold she would be all day if she didn't put on something warmer. Sometimes you have to let them, learn the hard way.
By the time I got to her after school (after approximately six seconds outside) her skin was taking on a blueish hue and she could barely speak over the teeth chattering.
"So your tank top days are over 'til next summer. Too cold, right? You'll be lucky if you don't get pneumonia." (Another vastly illogical parental chestnut that I have been waiting my entire life to use.)
"What's m-m-memonia?" she chattered.
"You get really sick." I said trying to sound concerned and fatherly.
"Like how sick?" she asked, the colour starting to return to her cheeks. "like have to stay inside in bed sick?"
"Oh yes," I said.
"And would you get a temperature?"
"Burning up," I said.
"You g-g-go on fire?" she shivered again. "Holy c-c-crap, you'd burn the bed."










So Izzy was downstairs in the basement with me again, wrapped up in the old silver tree skirt again and knocking stuff over while "Queen Isobel" berated her lazy subjects again. It was a lot of;
"You people just don't get it." Crash.
"You will be punished!" Crang.
"You will respect me and listen!" Wham.
I was preparing to say something about the mess that she was creating and how she and her subjects had better start cleaning it up...and then something odd happened. The Avril Lavigne song "I'm with you" (Damn Cold Izzy calls it) came on the ipod (Yes thank-you it is on my ipod...for Izzy and me) and Izzy closed her eyes, put her head back and started turning slowly to the music. It was strange and beautiful all at once and it made me think of someone turning on a snowy day, catching snowflakes on their tongue as they turned round and round. I don't know why but that was the image that went through my mind.
My kids are brats. As was I and my siblings brats to our parents and Mrs. Narrator was to her her parents and your kids are brats and so were you and so are everyone else's kids. Brats, brats, brats... But they are precious, kids are. The most meaningful thing you will ever do in your life is raise your kids. I don't think I know anything more about parenting than I did four years ago, the only difference is now I feel like a Dad.
The holidays are coming up...spoil your kids. They deserve it.