Parent’s Homework

I was asked to tell my daughter’s teacher about my daughter to help them teach/reach/see/care for them. OK, teacher, watch for her this year.

“The Long Way to Grandmother’s House

by Tannalee’s momma

Everyone knew the shortest way to Grandmother’s house. Especially Red.

“Past the oak, left at the creek, second path, over the bridge, straight through the pines,” she recited.

Her mother smiled. “You know you don’t have to check the map again.”

“I know.”

Red checked it anyway, one finger tracing the path while the other traced it through the air. She then crossed her arms to see if she could do it backwards.

She pulled on her cape.

“You’re getting too big for that old thing,” Mother said.

Red stretched out her arms. Her wrists extended well beyond the sleeves.

“It still fits.”

“Red.”

“It fits enough.”

Mother had explained that children outgrew things. Shoes. Dresses. Beds. Toys. Red understood.

She simply did not see why knowing something had to happen meant you had to be in a hurry for it to happen.

She picked up Grandmother’s basket.

“Straight there,” Mother said.

“I know.”

“And don’t dawdle.”

Red turned with a magnificent swirl of her cape and flourished directly into a tree.

She looked at the tree.

The tree, having followed the instructions perfectly, remained exactly where it was.

Red frowned, righted herself on the path, and dusted off her cape.

“I meant to turn the other way.”

“I know,” Mother said.

Red looked suspiciously at her.

Then she marched toward the woods.

She dawdled.

At the oak, Red stopped for three purple flowers because Grandmother liked purple.

At the creek, she checked the map, although she knew perfectly well it was the second path.

At the bridge, her brother and little sister ran across and turned to watch her.

“Come on, Red!”

Red stopped.

She knew how to cross the bridge. She had crossed it dozens of times. But with everyone watching, something happened to all that knowing. Her heart beat faster. The bridge seemed narrower. She got dizzy, and her tummy was talking.

“Stop looking at me.”

“What?”

“Turn around.”

They did.

Red crossed easily.

Of course she did.

They found the wolf beyond the creek.

He was small and dirty and crying beneath a blackberry bush.

“Don’t touch him,” her brother said.

“I’m not.”

Red held out her hand.

The wolf sniffed it.

Then he licked her finger.

That was that.

“We can’t take him,” her brother said. “He’ll grow up.”

“So?”

“He’ll be a wolf.”

Red looked at the little creature.

“Well, everybody grows into something. Even the tallest of trees once grew from the smallest of seeds.”

They waited for his mother. Ten minutes, then fifteen, then twenty.

No mother came.

Red picked him up.

They were late to Grandmother’s house.

Of course they were.

Red had picked an assortment of flowers, checked a map she already knew, rescued a wolf, bandaged her brother’s scraped knee, and held her little sister’s hand when she got tired.

She had also invented an elaborate history for the abandoned cottage beside the path involving a misunderstood witch and an enormous cat.

The enormous cat, she explained, could defeat the enormous dragons.

Her brother pointed out that dragons could fly.

Red considered this. 

Then the cat got a rocket ship.

Grandmother listened to the explanation from her porch.

“You know there is a shorter way here.”

“I know.”

“And you appear to have brought me a wolf.”

“He needed us.”

Grandmother looked at Red for a moment.

Then she looked at the wolf.

“Well,” she said. “You’d better all come inside.”

That evening, Mother saw them coming home through the trees.

First came Red’s brother, singing the empty basket in step.

Then her little sister, dragging her stuffed rabbit with one hand and clutching a pinecone with the other.

Then came Red.

The baby wolf trotted beside her.

Of course he did.

Mother could not hear whatever Red was explaining to them, but she could see her hands moving as she talked. Then Red clapped out a rhythm, the others answered, and suddenly all four of them were singing something Mother had never heard before and jumping over the same invisible spot in the path.

Even the wolf seemed to understand the rules.

Of course he did.

Mother smiled.

Then she noticed the sleeves.

The red cape had been made for Red two winters ago. Red loved it and saw no reason she needed another.

Everyone had told her she was outgrowing it.

Red knew.

But there were things about the old cape worth keeping.

It was soft from being worn. She knew exactly how it settled around her shoulders. Its pockets held treasures nobody else would recognize as treasures--a peach pit, a rubber button, something shiny whose original purpose had long since ceased to matter.

 And when she pulled up the hood, the world became smaller and quieter.

She wasn't ready to give that up simply because her arms had grown.

But her hands now hung well beyond the cuffs.

Soon there would need to be a new cape.

There would be longer roads too, ones Mother would not have walked first, with maps she could not draw and bridges she could not cross for her.

For now, though, Red was still Red.

A girl who read the map twice.

Who wanted terribly to get things right.

Who could know exactly how to cross a bridge until everyone turned to watch her do it.

Who could turn an abandoned cottage into a witch’s house and give the witch’s cat a rocket ship with the logic of the story required one.

Who would stop for something small and frightened even when she was already late.

Who carried things for people she loved until sometimes there was very little room left in the basket for herself.

Mother had occasionally wondered whether the world would teach her to stop doing that. Now, she hoped it would teach her instead to leave a little room for herself.

At the edge of the trees, Red turned.

“Come on,” she called to the wolf.

He bounded after her.

Red reached down and clumsily scooped him up. His paws dangled beneath one arm while the other waved wildly toward home.

For just a moment, before the path curved, Mother could see all of her.

The red cape that was becoming too small.

Long bare wrists sticking out from sleeves she had outgrown.

The baby wolf tucked safely against her chest because somewhere along the way Red had decided he belonged to her care.

And her golden hair flying behind her, somehow catching starlight in the last light of the day between the trees.

Mother wished, suddenly and impossibly, that she could keep her there.

Not small.

She knew better than to wish for that.

Just still able to see a pinecone as treasure. A cottage as a witch’s house. A frightened wolf as something to carry home.

Then Red rounded the corner of trees.Mother wrapped both hands around her tea and inhaled slowly.

Red had not taken the long way because she was lost. She had never been lost.

She was paying attention.

And perhaps Mother’s job, and the gift of those fortunate enough to walk a little of the path beside her, was not to teach her how to hurry through the woods, before the world taught her to worry where she once wondered. 

Perhaps it was to remind her that there would always be time to stop for purple flowers.

To leave a little room in the basket for herself.

To trust that she knew the way home.

And, when the ordinary paths would not do, that it was perfectly all right to get there by rocket ship.