Monday Zen

On my way back home from the market this afternoon, I took a detour through Marcus Garvey Park. It was all day today as it has been often recently, pleasantly and unexpectedly warm despite reports of rain I walked slowly by the childrens' playground and watched small children running across the kiddie bridge. One of a pair twin boys was sitting at the top of a very short yellow spiral slide on one side of the bridge with a pacifier in his mouth. The woman who was taking care of him called out "Hold on!" but I was thinking Let go. And he did hold on. He held on at the top and in the middle and all the way down. I laughed as I passed him by. "He doesn't wanna let go," I said aloud to myself. I was just like that when I was a little girl in the playground as well. On the slides, the swinging rope, the sliding pole. I didn't wanna let go either.

Pacifier

My dad stopped by my apartment this weekend and we had a little catch up session in which he mentioned to me that during one his recent photo shoots (he's a part time professional photographer) at a little girl's birthday, he had trouble photographing her because she had a pacifier in her mouth. "I can't stand pacifiers!" he said. I laughed and asked what the big deal was. I understand that pacifiers are meant to do just that having seen it shoved into a screaming child's mouth countless times in parks and trains and many other public places.
"You and your brother never had pacifiers." he told me. "You never cried like that." I thought about it and realized he was right. There is not one pacifier to be seen in any of our baby pictures. "You guys never even sucked your thumbs." he said. True also. My brother did go through a very brief phase of sucking both his index finger and the one next that. I remember hanging out in bed with him and trying it myself but I just didn't get it. I swear it seemed to last only about a week. My dad told me that when my mom, who had come here to America from Trinidad to stay with her parents took care of her little cousin, she took the pacifier out of her mouth, hid it and then threw it out of the window! That had me dying! Clearly, my parents agreed that there would be no pacification for their children.

I'm really not sure why my brother and I were both so well behaved. I see kids break out in all manner of insane tantrums all over the city. I've seen parents beat their kids in street and kids beat their own parents as well. All the pacification I ever needed as girl was for my mom to give me one stern look if I was behaving badly and that was it. No questions. But there must have been something more she did to get us that way. I often wonder if I ever have kids whether I would be able to get similar results. I think children must know something at a very early age, that they must respond to something unseen, something unconscious in their parent's behavior. They must sense the true intent behind the action.