Ramblings About Growing and Building and the Ph.D

The fall season is definitely here. The leaves are turning, the air is cold, and giant pumpkins are sitting in the parking lot of every grocery store, waiting like pound puppies for a good home.

Do you remember how I said that we’re participating in a pumpkin growing contest with the neighbors? Well, things are not going well. First off, my pumpkin plant decided to escape. One night we heard faint screams coming from the yard. If you listened closely, you could hear a voice wailing, “Let me out of here!!!!!! She’s killing me!!!!” And then the next day, I noticed that my pumpkin plant had grown itself out through our fence and was heading away in search of a more suitable family.

There are only a few weeks until Halloween, and the plant's two pumpkins are pretty puny. I don’t even think you can officially call them pumpkins yet. Is there such a thing as a fetal pumpkin? And the sad thing is that someone has taken a hearty bite out of the side of one of them.



It’s not all that surprising, considering I have never actually nurtured a plant successfully. I don’t have that je ne sais quoi, that green thumb, that whatever it is that makes some people able to cultivate a nice yard. I’m not even sure that it’s fair to call our yard a yard; it’s more like a plastic toy-filled jungle.

But anyway, I like to think that the reason why I’m not good at plants is because I’m showering all my love and attention on my kids. You know, all the bushes in the front of the house might be dead, but look at these robust, flourishing children! Woo!

Apparently, Blue and Green think differently. The other day, when the sun had not even come up yet, I felt a small tap on my arm. “Mama?” Green said. “Huh?” I garbled, not yet awake enough to communicate. “Where are the hammer and nails?”

I almost said, “They’re in the top drawer under the microwave,” but something nagged at me. Why would a five year old be asking for the tools? “Green,” I asked, “why in the world would you need a hammer and nails?” “Because,” he answered, “today Blue and I are going to build a house just for us where we can make up all the rules.”

Well, there you have it. The pumpkins left me, and the kids are moving out.



In the meantime, however, the boys are cluttering my world with all sorts of building projects. One hot activity is creating a "nurse's office" out of their bedroom. To make this work, they gathered all of their plastic medical equipment and drafted some architectural sketches:



And now they are in debate about one crucial element. Who's going to be the nurse? Neither one wants this job. While they were working out the details of the project, I overheard this conversation:

Green: Mama can be the nurse, because she's a doctor.
Blue: No, wait, she's not really a doctor.
Green: She used to be a doctor, but now she's a teacher.
Blue: I think we need to find someone else's Mommy to be the nurse.

I'm glad to see that my confusion about my career does not belong to me alone. The Ph.D is such a vague thing. On the one hand, it's a badge that represents lots of hard work. But on the other hand, I get to wander through life being "not a real doctor." The boys asked me to tell them about what we do in my classes. I could see on their faces that they were expecting me to talk about the kinds of things they do all day: drawing apples, counting, finger painting. "Well," I answered, "in my class we talk about ideas and issues." They both blinked. "Mama," Blue said, "that doesn't sound like very much fun."

Blue actually has a sense of what he wants to be when he grows up. This boy is not going to hang around for 10 years trying to earn a degree that no one understands. He has decided that he's going to be a "plan maker." And he's already practicing. Sometimes, at the end of the afternoon, I stand in the school hallway and spy on the boys. More often than not, Blue is perched on a chair that towers above all the little kids building castles and forts with the wooden blocks. When I ask him why he's just sitting there, he tells me that he is "hard at work being in charge."

Smart kid. This one's gonna make me proud.