Sculpting

My older son ran this morning… against his wishes.  But the rule is he has to do some activity, and that has defaulted to running with mom.  So like many of these Sunday morning runs, I have a lot of time to think while he sulks in silence.  Today I mused on how parenting is in part about sculpting this forming creature that is my child.

I suspect that I pondered this because I recently returned Borne by Jeff Vandermeer to the library.  Unfortunately, I returned it before I finished it, but somehow I don’t mind.  It is one of those books that I need to consider for a while before picking it back up.  The first half of the book concerns the creation of a sentient creature out of a blob.  The blob has an amorphous and ever-reconfiguring form that expands as its intelligence and sense of self form.  But this happens rapidly and not at all like a child. Despite that it did spark in me thinking about the forming of a person from one state to another.

The metaphor I rolled around in my head was as if moving from infant to adulthood could be compared to a substance changing state from liquidity to plasma to solidity.  The metaphor can be pursued in different ways.  For instance, you could discuss the density of the person increasing as experience and knowledge increases.  I, however, was more interested in the role of the parent (and other caretakers) in that formation.  My first thought was that parents were

like a vessel or cup creating a structure that completely surrounds the pure undiluted liquid.  But, of course, that’s ridiculous.  There’s no complete protection from the surrounding environment no matter how thickly you construct the walls.  So where does that leave us? Is the vessel only there for infancy and liquidity, but as soon as the toddler begins doing exactly that, toddling, we’ve moved into a plasmatic state.  It’s like taking the green slime we use to ooze from its plastic container to stretch and shiver at its appealing yet revolting gooeyness.  I love the idea of this, but it leads to many metaphorical questions. Is a parent only one pair of hands that plays with it?  Are the house rules the container and the lid?

At what age do we consider that the substance/child becomes more like Silly Putty? Flexible, able to hold a form, likely to pick up the surrounding information and reflect it back?  Is this early childhood?  Elementary school?

As a complete aside, as I searched for images of these toys, I’m disturbed to find that all of them, simply all of them, have only white people portrayed. White kids, white adults, even the cropped photos show white hands. And what about Silly Putty itself? That peachy color that is often referred to as “flesh” as if all flesh matches that tone. I had to scroll considerably to find a blue Silly Putty. I hope that it’s a ridiculous assumption that only white kids play with these kinds of toys. Even if you rule out the impoverished for whom these toys could be a frivolity, the middle class consists of all flesh tones. Advertisers should be ashamed.  

When parenting a slowly solidifying substance, what do we consider adolescence? [According to David Walsh in his book Why Do They Act That Way? the human brain maintains an adolescent form until the early twenties.]  Regarding our metaphor, how about modeling clay?  Let’s say that the earlier years it’s the cheap flexible colorful clay that mom scrapes from your bedroom carpet occasionally after someone has stepped on it and puts it back in the old Tupperware designated for this toy.

As the adolescent goes from pre-teen to teen, then we move to that firmer material that no longer contains much stretchability?  Something like Fimo? This works for me.

I like the idea that the teen years are about shaping and forming and sometimes completely starting over again.  The goal of modeling clay is to create an identifiable something, right? Early versions may be less detailed.  It may be playful at some moments and then completely crushed and re-formed the next.  But if we agree to this metaphor, who exactly is doing the shaping?  A huge portion of that must be the teen, itself.  But what would we consider the container that serves as the structure that parents or school provide?  It is yet another random Tupperware, or is it the crafting container with partitions and/or drawers with tools and colors and add-ons like googly eyes?  Or are we merely the shelf on which the figurine sits on display until it is reshaped or replaced?  Perhaps all of the above?  I’d venture a guess that parents are more shelf, and friends are more tools and colors and googly eyes.

You might pursue this metaphor through the early adult-hood stages of crafting and honing.  Of occasionally carving off pieces that no longer work or wetting portions to etch in new lines.  Again in this metaphor, I’m drawn to the sculptor.  I imagine that at some point the manipulating hands transition from a parent pouring and stretching to the person theirself.

At some point, as parents, we stand in the gallery staring in awe at the work of art before us baffled and picturing how it is that we once held it our hands.