A Road Less Travelled

“It is my own belief…that every good and beautiful thing which man has produced in the world has been the result of his faulty and sin-blocked response to the creative Voice [of God] sounding over the earth. The moral philosophers who dreamed their high dreams of virtue, the religious thinkers who speculated about God and immortality, the poets and artists who created out of common stuff pure and lasting beauty: how can we explain them?… Could it be that a genius is a man haunted by the speaking Voice, laboring and striving like one possessed to achieve ends which he only vaguely understands? That the great man may have missed God in his labors, that he may even have spoken or written against God does not destroy the idea I am advancing.” A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God

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There is something completely undignified about having to pay attention to what goes on in the restroom. I mean, sometimes someone will make a toilet joke and sometimes maybe someone laughs, but only when it’s someone else he’s laughing at. There is just something essentially private about what happens to food after we eat it.

I have listed before my least favorite tasks connected with children and I think they all revolve around the grosser bodily functions. I just don’t want to have to think about it. But now that Noah is potty training I pay so much attention to his bladder and bowels that I should list ‘Noah’s insides’ under my hobbies and interests. Isaac took Noah to the bathroom today and when he got out I asked him certain questions as to the amount of waste Noah had produced. For bookkeeping purposes, of course. Isaac, helpfully, answered me accurately and in detail. I said thank you and then put my head in my hands and tried to remember why I took this job.

There is something very humbling about potty training and I don’t mean for the child. The child doesn’t care. Noah doesn’t know that there is a cultural taboo on discussing what happened when one uses the facilities nor does he understand it is not considered polite to run naked through the house announcing his toilet success. No, potty training is humbling for the grown-ups involved.

Human beings are fantastically beautiful creatures who were created to reflect the beauty and imagination of the Creator. Our bodies are exquisitely complicated and capable of unbelievable feats of strength and grace. And at the same time we are just plain funny looking. Have you ever contemplated noses? As the proud owner of a pretty silly looking shnozz let me assure you there is no shame in laughing merrily at this fleshy growth protruding from the front of your face. It’s silly looking. And that is just one example. I could write a long post just about noses, but the body is full of oddnesses and silly bits. Next time we see each other ask me about elbows. I could spent a good five minutes just laughing at elbows. But I digress.

The human body manages to combine beauty, grace, strength and splendor with silliness, oddness, and downright grossness. But we are cultured people and we like to forget this last part. But just so we never forget to laugh at ourselves we have children and must teach them what to do with their waste. It is humbling and exalting at the same time. Humbling because I have to be focused on this part of being alive I just really don’t want to think about and exalting because if I do my job right I will not only have taught Noah to go potty in the toilet, but I will have also taught him to laugh at this part of being human. I just hope the second part outweighs the first.

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This is Margary. To be specific, this is Margary after seeing that I have a camera in my hand, very excited about the chance to come drool on it. If she’s on the floor I can usually get one picture of her doing whatever she was doing, and a maximum of two pictures while she’s crawling towards me after she sees the flash from the first one. After that my only chance of getting a picture of her is letting her chew on one end of the wrist strap of the camera while I take pictures with the camera at the other end of the strap. Needless to say, this only works okay.

This is Margary climbing the stairs. This pastime is far to interesting to be distracted from by a mere camera, so it’s actually possible to snap pictures of her doing this. The difficulty there is catching her while she’s still on the stairs, as she usually zooms up them so quickly that she’s at the top before we even knew she was near the stairs.

 This is Margary in the Ben-Ezra’s kitchen. For some reason, I don’t have a good picture of her in our kitchen even though it’s one of her favorite places to hang out. Not only does it have a dishwasher which is Extremely Cool, but it has a radio out of which come the most amazing sounds. She likes it even better when we’re playing a CD because she can watch the little blue light while she listens to the music. Barring the delights of pulling silverware out the dishwasher, or of listening to music, she likes to haul herself up my skirt and stare at me pathetically while I’m trying to grind flour.

While this is not yet documented by photograph, Margary also loves drinking out of a glass, and in fact will hold the glass of water herself. She has a bit of a stubborn streak (not that this runs in the family or anything…) and refuses to be deterred by nearly choking herself on every third sip. Beyond this she occupies herself with emptying any box or basket she can get her hands on, banging on any flat surface that presents itself, clapping her hands, and generally being extraordinarily cute.

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