I thought I had learned it all before becoming a mother.
Living and working in Manhattan, I had learned how to catch a cab to the airport (hide the suitcase), how to tip in a restaurant (double the tax), and how to get uptown the fastest (take a subway). I even learned how to negotiate with the IRS (you don’t).
Working mostly in television, I had mastered such arcane tricks of the trade as how to buy coffees for 12 (get separate milk) and how long it would really take to set up a shot (till lunch).
But as it turned out, I knew nothing of any importance; nothing that would help me with my new career of being somebody’s Mommy. All my old skills were about as useful as scuba gear in the desert, and it took me quite a while to acquire new ones.
First, I learned to notice things. One rainy day instead of going for a walk, I sat with my toddler at the picture window. After the trash truck went by, I started to turn away. It’s embarrassing, having an attention span shorter than your 2-year-old’s, but after all, what else was there to see?
But he cried, so I stayed a little longer. And was forced to notice: one bird flying away. Another one flying back. Waited longer still and finally realized there was a nest in the lilac bush, and the parent birds were probably feeding babies. A robin’s nest in front of my own picture window, and I had never noticed it. But my toddler had.
After the rain, we went for a walk. But we had to keep stopping to look at every crack in the sidewalk.
“Come ON, sweetie, you wanted to walk!”
“Ants!” And not just one — a swarm of them. “Up a tree!” Sure enough, big black ants were marching up and down the trunk of our oak tree. Carpenter ants! Probably ought to call someone and have that dealt with—before the tree fell on the house.
We’re stopped again. “It’s a brick wall, honey. Made of bricks.” Lordy, I thought to myself, how many times can we look at the same brick wall?
But my child smiled and pointed. “Piano!” he said. And, indeed, with just a little imagination, the top-of-the-wall pattern, with one brick flat and then one on edge, did look like a sort of piano keyboard.
From bricks and bushes, we graduated to my son’s first big passion: cars and trucks.
B.C. — Before Children — all I knew about a car was its color. If pressed, I could probably tell the difference between a sedan and a station wagon.
After I became a parent, if God forbid we were in an accident, I realized we could count on my child to tell the police all about whatever hit us. At 27 months, he could tell a Honda from a Volvo, and that’s not because he could read. I pulled into a station one time to get gas, and he looked across at the other car and said “Cadillac!”
“Honey, that’s a big car,” I replied, “but I’m not sure it’s a Cadillac.” Of course, it was.
I had to learn things myself to keep up. Take, for example, what I learned about the World of Trucks (with help from Richard Scarry’s classic, “Cars and Trucks and Things That Go”) Always before to me trucks were just an annoyance: something to avoid being stuck behind or next to. Something tying up traffic when they worked in the street. Something that I, in my smaller car, couldn’t see past.
Suddenly, I was grateful whenever we were stuck in traffic next to a truck, because there was always something to notice and comment about. Who knew, for example, that semis carried their spare tires underneath in a sort of sling? I do now. Or that they have their gas tanks under the cab, often with the steps up right on top of them?
I’ll bet I learned more about trucks than anyone who wasn’t a truck driver—or a toddler’s mom.
Most of all, I learned that there is always more to notice and learn about everything if only you keep your eyes — and your mind — open.
And it doesn’t hurt to let a toddler lead the way.
