At the height of this evening's Shrove Tuesday Pancake Dinner, our adorable five-year-old was discovered leaping from the countertops of the ladies' restroom into a swamp of orange juice, water, hand soap, and paper towels. As I entered the scene (feeling like the bad mother who isn't keeping track of her kids -- though Eve has been managing the restroom herself for several months at least) I also realized that two of our dear elderly parishioners were about to emerge into this sludge, and I could just see explaining to the paramedics that they had fallen because of my child's mess. So there was hasty, very hasty, cleanup with massive numbers of paper towels. And then the eye-opening reports regarding countertop leaping, which Eve would later defend as part of her cleaning method. If you squirt soap and drop towels into the spilled juice, then take a flying leap into the puddle, well, it's clear how this enhances the result. Right?
Do I have a "PK"? I grew up hearing of the infamy of PKs - "preachers' kids" - the wild ones who bent rules and acted out publicly, embarrassing their parents who were supposed to be setting excellent examples, or something. (I don't recall any PK types who really lived up to these negative expectations, but I do remember the expectations.)
Marc and I have been conscientious in choosing certain aspects of parenting -- not to beat our children, not to shame them, not to do their work for them. We aspire to help them discover their talents, their interests, their independent thinking skills. What we didn't exactly foresee was that all this sense of being comfortable in their own skins, relatively unafraid, and independent, could result in some striking behavior choices from time to time. And that this might be embarrassing every now and then.
Independent Eve recruited all the smaller children to be tigers and to playfully scratch the legs of unsuspecting pancake eaters. Fearless Eve led the younger ones on a expedition to the top of a desk in the hallway. YES we have been over this. She knows not to climb furniture. But the prospects of leadership must have overwhelmed her good sense.
Yes, there was a time out and yes we had eaten too much sugar and yes she merrily left time out for the orange swamp adventure.
I felt frustrated. It's one thing for the kids to pull shenanigans at home, but it feels quite different in public, and good grief can't they tell the difference between our living room and the church parish hall?
And then it hit me - they don't see a difference. Raised in the church, and having been robustly welcomed by the community, they really do see it as a second living room. And would we want them to feel any other way? Full of pancakes, Isaac happily read his Percy Jackson novel, while Eve tore around thinking of activities for her cohort. Very much at home, both of them.
When I went to college and discovered campus ministry, I found it to be a haven for PKs. My friends shared tales of how closely they were scrutinized, the pranks they would pull, and the acting out in a minor bid for some breathing room. They loved the churches they grew up in, yet they also experienced them as fishbowls -- "the place where everybody knows your name" and where those everybodys are often quite aware of your choices, both good and poor.
We left tonight soon after the worst of this. On the drive home, I told Eve that I did not appreciate her unfortunate choice to make a huge mess and her dangerous choice to make flying leaps into the mess. Eve told me that she "did not appreciate it when those ladies tattled on me."
Eve earned a silent time of reflection for the drive home, and a one-way ticket to bed immediately on arrival.
She is now sleeping soundly next to me, "not as a stranger or a guest, but like a child at home."
