I don't share my children's names when I write, but I have to share this.
My daughter's name is not Pearl, and I have worried that she can't write her actual name as well as she should be able to for a 4-year-old.
Everyone thinks that after your first kid, you know what's up and that is mostly true, except what is also true is that you forget so much. You forget what the first one learned when, when the second one and the third one should be doing what. You just forget things. Also, each child has to go and be all different on you. Maybe you have experience with one certain kid, but when the next ones come along, they change it up for you; they're creative like that. You're also a lot more tired, so you end up reading fewer books to those after the firstborn or, as I like to say, you outsource more. The firstborn reads to the others more than I do now, I'm sorry to say. Actually, I'm not sorry; that's why I had him.
Anyways, everyone knows the stereotype of the middle child: They need attention, they crave it, they want fairness, yadda, yadda, yadda. I am a middle child so I like to give a big middle finger to all of that stereotyping just to prove it's all accurate, I suppose. But, there is one generality that I'm about to make that I think may be true, at least in my experience of middle children: They like to screw with you just to see if you're paying any attention at all.
I am worried that my girl, my middle child, can't write her name well enough for her age. I am worried that she is not academically at the place that she should be in, according to what they will be teaching when. This worry is partially ridiculous, I know, because she is just 4 years old, but nevertheless, it's there. I am not worried that she is not smart; she's plenty smart. I am worried that she doesn't give a damn and that that will mean that I will have to give a damn. I am not good at giving a damn. My firstborn really gives a damn. He does his own homework; I don't check it. He empties his backpack each day and gets going. I'm just here in case of a fire for him; otherwise, he runs his own plays. He reads and then gives me a history of, say, glaciers and I'm all, "Uh-huh. Very nice," with my eyes half closed.
You don't get them all like that, though, and thank goodness; what a bore that would be. I'd have so little to write about.
So, along comes my girl, whose name is not Pearl, who when I ask her to tell me what sound the letter "P" makes, she answers, with a smile on her face, "four." There is no raised voice at the end of her answer to make it sound like a question, like she's not sure, like girls sometimes affect as if they don't know anything, even when they know plenty. She states her incorrect answer as fact, as crazy, ridiculous "I am answering a number for a sound question in yo' face" fact. And then she looks at me and we stare at each other. And I pray then. Practically only then, some days.
I don't know what she is trying to teach me. I cannot always figure her out. I think she loves me very much and I think she likes to see me squirm a little bit. I think she likes to have a lot of fun; she is a LOT of fun. I don't think she gives a damn about how hard kindergarten might be for her next year. Maybe she knows better than I that it'll all work out through development and readiness when she's actually ready. She's right about all of that, I think, even if I still worry. For now, she's ready for what she's ready for. And what she's ready for is writing whatever in the world name she chooses. And giving me an answer she knows is incorrect just to see my reaction.
She's got the tools to write her own given name should she want to. There are a couple of letters in "Pearl" that make up her own name, thank goodness, so we're on the right track.
For the past week, she's been Pearl. She's written Pearl on her papers that she brings home, which look nothing much like the creations the other children bring home, if I really compared. The others are what a Type A person would call "better" and more like what it should look like, whatever that may be.
Her creations are out there -- a little like what you'd make if you were high on something and had limited dexterity with your art tools. She tells me, for nearly every picture, that it's coral. These circular, scribbly lines are coral like what she sees when she's snorkeling, she says. I mean, we live in the Midwest, so I don't even know what to say about that.
Other times, she draws tall straight lines straight up and down -- the lines don't look like a building to me until she calls them the Eiffel Tower. There are these dots she has made, off to the side of the tower, and that's where we are having a picnic, she explains.
These kids, man -- they take you on a wild ride. Maybe I thought I was getting on one ride, but they show me everyday, it is definitely some other ride. Even the one who currently gives a damn -- that ride with him is still challenging in its own ways. I don't have a one I haven't wondered and worried about; does any mother?
At least, I assumed, I was getting on a ride with my girl whose name we chose. In fact, though, it's a totally different ride, as parenting usually is, with a girl named Pearl - well, at least for today anyways.
Someday, I hope, we can have a good laugh about it all, maybe on a picnic blanket off to the side of the Eiffel Tower in Paris -- me, the middle child, with my girl, the middle child, screwing with one another across the continents, the way mothers and daughters have for centuries.