It turns out that all the kids near us are older than Arielle by at least three years. They tend to be in the latter half of their elementary school years, up through high school. Which is becoming painful.
Next door there lives a little girl, Jasmine, five years older than Arielle. She has been over here playing with the girls a few times, as have other of the neighborhood kids, but only a little bit. They're curious, but not interested in spending too much time with kids so much younger than them. Which is only natural and I don't fault any of them at all for that.
It's just that Arielle has been spending a lot of time standing in the corners of our yard, looking longingly at them, yelling to try to get their attention, running along the side of the road calling to them as they bicycle past, and then, at the end of the day, coming inside crying because she wanted to play with someone and no-one wanted to play with her.
It is breaking my heart. I lured her into spending all of yesterday playing inside by letting her play games on the computer, something she normally doesn't get to do. I just couldn't bear another day of her standing there so forlornly.
Gabrielle is still young enough that she doesn't really even notice that she's not being played with. She's still all about parallel play. But Arielle is moving away from me, into a world where I can't fix things for here, where she'll be effected by values other than our own (Jasmine told Arielle the other day, with great approval, that she looked, "like a mini-teenager, from behind!" Jasmine is, in my opinion, way too focused on her weight and appearance.)
I'm scared. I don't know how to handle this. There are so many things out there that are vicious, even evil, influences. I don't want my little girls to grow up thinking their value lies in their ability to be attractive. I don't want them running into someone who preys on children. I don't want them being given drugs or alcohol (my sister had her first drink at 14!)
Saturday, one of the neighborhood boys stopped for a few moments at our yard on his perambulations. He decided to pick up Gabrielle. Then he dropped her. It was an accident; I think she was too heavy for him. She landed on her face though. Next thing I knew, she was screaming, and running for the porch with blood everywhere.
She broke her front tooth. We wound up spending the afternoon in the emergency room, getting x-rays to make sure she hadn't inhaled the tooth fragment (I had to help pin her down for that. She was screaming her head off and fighting to cuddle up to me. It was horrible.) Only time will tell if the tooth will die, the dentist told us.
Seeing my little daughter with a mouth full of blood scared the living daylights out of me. It's a good thing the husband was home, because I actually panicked. I couldn't think what to do. He's the one that got us bundled into the car and drove us to the emergency room. I don't normally panic. I was completely calm the time last summer that I had to take Gabrielle to the emergency room when she fell and cut her head open. (Glue instead of stitches. I love the inventor of super glue.) But Saturday I knew she had to have broken a tooth and I was too afraid to look. There was just so. much. blood.
And that was minor. I think of the boy I used to know who was hit by a car while riding his bike. He was only left blind. Another boy I knew, one who had a crush on me, was hit by a car crossing the street. It rained the day of his funeral. It was a school day. I remember sitting in my junior high math class, with his empty chair next to me, not sure what to feel.
Did you ever go to slumber parties? Remember how out of hand they could get, in the early hours of the morning? Remember some of the stuff that happened in the corners of the school playground, where the teachers couldn't see?
I'm remembering very clearly, for the first time in years, just how painful and dangerous childhood was, and I want to lock my children in the basement. I know I can't, especially since Arielle is such a friendly little one, so outgoing and extroverted. But I'm fighting a terrible battle within myself now, trying to figure out how to let her have more freedom, while still protecting her from all that danger. Not hurt feelings, as painful as that is, but the worse things.
I don't like this parent business. It's too hard all of a sudden.
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