“I Am a Lump”
Our Audrey has a history of delivering some fairly profound observations about her world in a manner that is so casual and offhand that it often hauls her parents up short. Here’s an example:
Yesterday, the kids and I were making a whirlwind stop at the grocery store, between school and swimming lessons. Now, for our kids, there’s something about being in a store that is sort of like being stuck together in the backseat of the car for a long drive. Without access to other approved amusements, Ned and Audrey will pull out all of their creative stops. Hilarity ensues as they construct some game or other that, while annoying to nearby adults, keeps the two of them in stitches until they are released from the boring environment.
That’s pretty much what was going on: the two of them were giggling, intermittently obstructing the aisles as they fooled around, and generally getting very close to my last nerve. And then, all of the sudden, as I chose a loaf of bread and prepared to dash for the check-out, Audrey paused to catch her breath and said, “At school, I am a lump. But at home I am completely different.”
As was the case when she asked me, “Mom, what is abortion, exactly?” as I was merging into heavy traffic on I-90, I was unable to give her words the immediate attention they deserved. But I did stop to ask her what it meant to be a lump, a term I would never in my life have applied to my vibrant, funny girl.
“Well, I’m not special. I’m just a person in my class. That’s not how it is at home.”
First, it needs to be said that, from everything I’ve observed, Audrey is far from being “just a person in her class.” It may be true — I hope it’s true — that her teachers offer equal attention and affection to all the children. That’s the way it ought to be, anyway. But she’s hardly a wallflower. So what could it mean, to be a “lump”?
Ideally, I’d be able to sit her down and ask her to tell me more about what she meant. But the same emotional intelligence that causes her to make these comments in the first place also allows her to detect when her mother is making more of something than she thinks it deserves, at which point she clams up. So it’s left to my imagination to ponder it out.
The conclusion I’ve decided to live with is that she feels her specialness to be somewhat neutralized in the institutional confines of school. I suppose this is what cynical people mean when they say, with a certain measure of unbecoming triumph, “Welcome to the real world.”
I’m all for recognizing the real world, I guess, but I was also hoping that we’d somehow create a glowing sphere around our kids that would be fully portable and impenetrable, though transparent — a layer of insulation from hard knocks.