By Michelle (Graceful, Faith in the Everyday)
It didn’t take long for me to realize that Noah is not an ordinary kid. When other two-year-olds were repeating words like “cookie” and “bye-bye,” Noah’s favorite word was “awning.” “Look at that fancy awning,” Noah would say, pointing at striped fabric as we drove past Roper & Sons Funeral Home.
When he was five Noah developed a love of plants, particularly succulents, those funky, Zen-looking plants that belong to the cactus family (or maybe cacti belong to the succulent family, I’m not sure – clearly I haven’t listened carefully enough to Noah). While other kids his age collected Pokémon cards and Spiderman figures, Noah collected euphorbia and crassula, aloe and agave. At last count he had 31 succulents in his collection.
I’ll never forget the time Noah sat on Santa’s lap and requested Designing with Succulents, a garden design book he’d spotted at Barnes & Noble. I could read the look on Santa’s face: not only did he not know what a succulent was, he suspected it had pornographic connotations. I stood behind the rope and yelled, “It’s a plant book! It’s a plant book!” in the hopes that Santa wouldn’t think my son was a miscreant.
Noah does not like competition, which means he doesn’t play any sports. Nor is he interested in games, including the innocuous variety like Candy Land and Sorry! Instead, he prefers to spend his time outdoors, rummaging for bugs in the garden or swinging in the hammock.
I admit, for a long time I tried to make Noah into someone different. “Why doesn’t he like soccer or tee-ball like normal kids?” I’d lament to my husband. “What kind of kid can identify a Bigtooth Aspen? That’s just weird. How’s he going to make any friends if all he talks about are Norway Spruce and beaver tail cactus all day?”
Now before you write me off as a big fat jerk of a parent, let me explain. I wanted Noah to be “normal” because I was afraid. I worried kindergarteners wouldn’t want to be friends with a kid who collected succulents. I worried he wouldn’t fit in if he didn’t play sports or couldn’t converse about Bakugans. I was afraid he would be seen as a misfit, rejected for his uniqueness and mocked for his gifts.
Over time, though, I have learned two things the hard way. One: that Noah is vastly more equipped to survive and thrive than I ever imagined. And two: that it wasn’t my place to mold him into the person I wanted him to be anyway.
“The hardest part of being a parent may be learning to live with the fact that there are so many things we simply can’t control, so much of the journey that is not our doing at all,” writes Katrina Kenison in The Gift of an Ordinary Day. “We may tend the garden for a while, take a brief turn upon the land, nurture the children delivered in our arms, but in truth we possess none of these things, nor can we write any life story but our own.”
Clearly I let fear dominate. Clearly I tried to write what I thought would be the best story for Noah, instead of trusting that he could write his own. Not only did I not have any faith in my son or in myself as a parent, I also didn’t trust God to pave a proper path.
As it turned out, Instead of being mocked for his love of succulents, Noah became known as “the kid who knows a lot about plants.” Rather than Legos and superhero figures, his friends gave him potted cactus and aloe as birthday gifts. And while he’s not on the soccer or baseball or football team, and he prefers katydids to kickball, Noah has carved out a comfortable and right place for himself in elementary school society nonetheless.
As for me, I’m still learning how to guide and help shape my children without controlling and manipulating them into who I think they need to be. Thankfully my kids are gifted teachers…and they have a whole lot of patience with me.
I can’t recommend Katrina Kenison’s lovely book The Gift of an Ordinary Day enough. Not only is she a brilliant, lyrical writer, she also changed my views on “different.” And for that I am grateful.
Michelle is a Christian wife and mother of two originally from Massachusetts now living in Nebraska. She is a part-time writer, editor and fundraiser for Nebraska PBS/NPR. Michelle loves to write about how her family illuminates God's presence in her everyday life, and on finding (and keeping) faith in the everyday. Michelle enjoys reading, running and writing. Be sure to go visit her blog, Graceful, Faith in the Everyday.