Rules Made to Bend

"Adults are just obsolete children and to hell with them."
--Dr. Seuss


My daughter Amelia sees the world through a prism. She takes what is ordinary and puts it through her reality and it becomes something else entirely. Something that to me seems totally absurd. And when I look at her questioningly, she returns my gaze as if to say to me, "you must be the one with a problem".

Let me give you an example. Since it is Christmas, I have taken great pride in decorating the house. I like every Santa to have its place, every garland and ribbon to be just so. And of course, the nativity scene, which adorns, as it does every year, the top of the blanket chest in the living room, must always be arranged the way I imagined all the figures were the night of Jesus' birth: the baby, of course, is in the middle of the rest of the ceramic figurines, the angel stands directly over the baby, and Mary and Joseph on either side, and the wise men, well, they're positioned according to their height around the holy family to make the whole scene balanced. The stable animals (there are 3 of them) are carefully placed as if they are demurely looking over their shoulders, pleased to death at the birth of the Lord. I have put a lot of thought into the nativity, as you can see. This year, Amelia has taken a special fascination in the nativity scene. Much to my dismay, she sneaks into the living room and has a go at a multitude of arrangements for the baby Jesus. My personal favorite is the time her Barbies got involved in the whole scene. I don't know if all 4 year old girls are like this, but Amelia quickly disrobes all Barbies as soon as they are removed from their packages. I find naked Barbies everywhere. Thank goodness Barbie's expression never changes, or Amelia's Barbies would always have a look of shame and bewilderment at their lack of clothing. Anyway, when I walked into the living room one day, there was a parade of naked Barbies across the piano bench and one especially spry naked Barbie straddling the church Christmas card holder located on the piano. All the members of the Nativity, including the baby Jesus and the camel were all lined up on the blanket chest, watching the bawdy display. It was enough to make me blush if I weren't too surprised at Amelia's choice for the entertainment of the Wise Men.

And just today, I asked Amelia to put the Nativity scene back in its correct order, The Way Mommy Likes It. I left her to her work, and when I went back to check on her progress, the figures were are technically in the right spot, except that she had left no room in between any of them. The baby Jesus was horribly cramped in the center, and the Wise Men and Joseph were jockeying for their positions, much like they were at a heavy metal concert. I don't know how Mary fared; she was lost in the sea of ceramic headbangers.

My point is this: adults have rules of how they think things should be, and we attempt to stuff everything in those rules. We try to put everything in neat homogeneous boxes. We stuff religion in boxes, relationships in boxes, educational tracks in boxes, ideas about success, and accumulation of wealth and goods in boxes. Everything, everything can go into a box that is fitted and constrained with rules. But children don't yet, thank goodness, define their lives totally based on the existence of rules. The can take them and bend them and make them into such extraordinary and unexpected things. Amelia has her own ideas of the nativity, and even though they don't fit into my nativity box, it doesn't make it wrong.

Amelia is asleep by me now. It snowed about a foot this weekend, and our little plot of the world is covered in snow and ice and it is so cold. She chose to put on her bathing suit with a butterfly applique and a flimsy summer skirt to sleep in. I am glad for the mountain of covers over her. I wouldn't for a million years ask her to take that bathing suit off.