What do you get when you combine a four-year-old with a lack of cable? PBS. Each night, as we near 7 o’clock and settle into snuggle mode, the only channel our family can watch together is PBS. Which is fantastic.
We’re not usually home on Wednesday nights, so last night I flipped through the networks to see what’s hip with the kids these days. And was faced with nothing but ‘reality’ programming, which is about as an ironic term as you’ll ever find. It’s a bleak landscape of shiny, distracting things lining a path of sorrow and shame leading to the darkest, dankest, slimiest basement of the soul with a litter box in the corner that hasn’t been cleaned in weeks.
Why do you people watch this garbage?
By contrast, our four local PBS stations are a lush wilderness of NOVA, WIRED Science, Fetch!, Live from Lincoln Center, and Rick Steves.
Soon after I installed our digital tuner, our family sat and watched an hour-long program about the heart. Ian watched the entire show, and later explained an embolism to my mother. That night he prayed for the little girl who’d undergone heart surgery.
Last night, instead of watching which model could strike the better pose, we watched Rick Steves’ Insider’s Europe. Rick was visiting Northwest England and some of his favorite farms cum bed-and-breakfasts. Ian watched as a little boy enthusiastically milked a cow, which looked a little nervous. Rick quickly cut to a scene with trotting ponies.
‘Oh,’ Ian said, pointing at the screen, ‘now they’re going to milk the horses.’
Ian was ready for bed, jammies zipped and teeth brushed, a final drink of water. ‘Okay, kiddo, go potty.’ To make room for the water.
He sauntered to the bowl and spoke over his shoulder. ‘You shouldn’t say that, Daddy. We say tinkle. Because we’re Englishmen.’
Kelly has parent/teacher conferences, so I’m working from home this morning. It’s difficult for Ian to understand that Daddy’s home but can’t play. The same could be said of me.
I assume this isn’t his normal routine, but he’s currently performing interpretive dance to the Godspell soundtrack. Props he’s used so far:
- Spiderman blanket
- straw
- Matchbox rescue helicopter
- Lincoln logs
His performances have been punctuated with brief bouts of coloring. Remember to tip your waitress.
I went to summer camp as a kid, and once took a tour of the local coal-fired power plant. I’m sure that significant portions of my memory have been supplemented by The China Syndrome and Space Mutiny, but I remember steel girders and corroded stairs, tangles of pipes and men wearing hard hats. Kalgan lurking in the shadows. Our guide opened a small hatch, and behind the door was a blazing sun.
We passed the Callaway nuclear power plant on a recent trip to Kansas City, a plume of vapor towering over the horizon, and I wondered aloud if they offered tours. Kelly said her Chemistry classmates toured the plant when she was in high school. Ian likes factories and plants, and I thought it’d be wonderful to show him the source of a quarter of Missouri’s electricity. But after 2001…who knows?
I wrote Ameren. Unfortunately, they replied:
I am sorry, but we are presently not offering public tours at Callaway
Plant. I can offer you an information packet about Ameren and Callaway.
If you wish to receive a packet, please email your mailing address to me
and we will send you one right away.
Apologies,
Rick Eastman
Supervisor, Business Planning & Communications
AmerenUE - Callaway Plant
Somehow, I don’t think an information packet would do the plant justice, least of all to a four-year-old boy who’s learning to read. I truly understand their reasoning, I just think it’s a shame that our children are yet another step further from the stage.
The fact that I’ll watch any Pixar movie is a moot point, because now I have no choice. You may have heard of their upcoming WALL-E, but details have been tantalizingly vague…until now.
I knew he was cute. Now that he’s in love, and on a rescue mission, he may well take over the world. Who are you to resist him?
One of our favorite restaurants is India Palace, perched atop a hotel overlooking the St. Louis airport. We’ve been taking Ian there since he was a baby; the food for us, the planes for him.
The staff are welcoming and helpful, quick and efficient, and are led by a stoic Sikh wearing a blue turban. He talks little and smiles less, and leaves patrons to their meals.
Yesterday Kelly and I waited at the table while Ian’s grandparents took him to the buffet. Soon after, we heard a loud shatter and Ian’s voice, ‘It was just an accident!’ Frightened and embarrassed, he began to cry.
And the man in the blue turban—whose name, we’ve learned, is Singh—took my son into his arms, and gave him a hug.
Later, shards and tears swept away, Singh refilled Ian’s water glass and quickly turned to leave. Ian stopped him, ‘What’s your name?’
And Singh smiled.
To Any Reader
By Robert Louis Stevenson
As from the house your mother sees
You playing round the garden trees,
So you may see, if you will look
Through the windows of this book,
Another child, far, far away,
And in another garden, play.
But do not think you can at all,
By knocking on the window, call
That child to hear you. He intent
Is all on his play-business bent.
He does not hear; he will not look,
Nor yet be lured out of this book.
For, long ago, the truth to say,
He has grown up and gone away,
And it is but a child of air
That lingers in the garden there.
A friend shared with me a story from NPR, about a multi-faith group of parents who gather to teach their children about their families’ beliefs and ‘virtues’ of spirituality, such as obedience and justice:
‘Rachel Galoob-Ortega, who is Jewish, says she wants her son Luka to learn about and accept all religions.
“What I really want for Luka is when he grows up and someone says to him, ‘I’m Baha’i’ or ‘I’m Zoroastrian’—if he doesn’t know, for him to say, ‘Well, tell me about that,”" Galoob-Ortega says.’
Which sounds good in theory, but leaves much to be desired in practice. The founding principle of this group, and apparently hundreds like it, is that ‘all religions are different but come from the same source, God’.
And here’s where I get indignant, and a little nauseated. What a wonderful thing for children to share and discover each other’s worldviews. Less so to teach that, in the end, it doesn’t really matter.
The children decorated lamp shades with a grab-bag of religious symbols, and took turns placing them on God’s light bulb:
‘”Remember how we talked about how religions are a lot like lamp shades?” [Layli Miller-Muro] asks the group. “They may look different, they may be different colors or sit in different rooms, but they all have the light of God inside of them.”‘
Remember, children: God is like a Swatch watch.
It’s important to me that Ian learn the value and significance of worldviews other than his own. The other side of that coin, however, is discernment: understanding that, according to his worldview, the others are wrong. Not simply special or different. Not neat or fun. Wrong.
And that’s okay.
People don’t like to use that word. Somehow ‘wrong’ has come to mean ‘evil’ and ’soulless’ and ’scum of the earth’. But ‘wrong’ is dispassionate and logical. It is a disagreement. A Muslim is not a Christian is not an atheist is not a Zoroastrian. If an atheist didn’t think a Christian was wrong, that atheist would be a Christian.
To teach our children otherwise is a disservice to their intelligence, and an insult to everyone. Our beliefs affect more than how we dress or what we eat or how we choose to spend our Sunday mornings. They guide our lives and our families; how we think, how we love, how we interact. My faith is my relationship with my Creator, and I would never presume to demean another’s faith by saying that, in the end, we’re all the same.
But this is what ‘accept all religions’ has come to mean. We avoid healthy conflict and constructive discourse by taking the easy way out and treating God like Imelda Marcos’ shoe closet.
I pray that my son has more respect for others—and himself—than that.
I don’t know about being descendent from Cain, but I certainly don’t do well in the mornings.
‘By contrast, Ian is a bushy-tailed camp counselor with eyes wide as the rising sun is bright, ready for a full day of sing-a-longs when all you want to do is crawl to the bottom of your sleeping bag and hibernate.’
