My little car is frequently filled to maximum capacity with children. And frequently, I push "record" on my phone’s voice memo feature* because the conversations are just too good, too brilliant, too hilarious.
True identities are revealed in the car.
SON: Sometimes I wake up with dog fur in my bed; we don’t have a dog, So, I think I might be a werewolf.
SON'S FRIEND: I turn into a poodle with an upside-down umbrella when the moon is full.
Elaborate plots are hatched on the back roads, plots to protect fairies and other magical creatures from exploitation, plots to dig an underground tunnel from the elementary school boys’ bathroom to the local pizza place, and plots for novels. Yesterday my six-year-old daughter announced she was going to write a book called, “The Approach of Evil Love.”
SON: I don’t get it. What’s Evil Love?”
DAUGHTER: It’s about this girl who falls in love with this boy, and he seems nice, but he’s not really. He’s tricking her.
ME: What happens to her?
DAUGHTER: Well, she changes. Her friends notice she changes.
Who is this teenager posing as my first-grader?
ME: Does it [the book] have a happy ending?
DAUGHTER: Yeah.
But really, who cares?! I am HORRIFIED more than intrigued. How in the world is my baby girl coming up with this concept of Evil Love? I have zealously protected her from all things non age-appropriate, haven’t I? Has she overheard her college age babysitter counseling a friend in bad relationship? Does her best friend’s high-school sister talk about things like this? I intend to find out.
ME: Where did you get this idea?
DAUGHTER: It just came to me while I was chewing on my bracelet (a candy bracelet leftover from Valentine's Day booty). I slyly grill my daughter the rest of the way home. There is no Evil Trickster Love in her young life, thank God. Boys her age care about Legos, handball and fart jokes; no interest in tricking innocent classmates into loving their evil little selves. ;)
At home, my daughter begins to write, asks me how to spell the word “approach,” then asks, “How old is a girl who dates?”
ME: Eighteen.
She doesn’t question this because she trusts me. Then I realize, she also listens to me and everyone else. She is ALWAYS listening and recording. No voice memo app required. As she writes, it hits me that my daughter got the idea for "The Approach of Evil Love" from me. She must have overheard a conversation I had with a mother, a conversation about which Young Adult novels have “healthy portrayals of relationships where girls don’t change because of an obsessive love,” etc.
But as I wrote this post, I realized there might be a more somber source, too. Cue major shift in tone. This week, I gave permission for my child to attend a Good Touch/Bad Touch presentation given by our local child-abuse prevention agency at her school. I sat in on this presentation with my sons. It's gentle (read tailored to the age of the listeners), well-done and important. I'd forgotten that "a change in a friend's behavior" is one of the signs of abuse children might observe. I don't think my daughter intends to write a novel about child abuse, but she must be processing the idea that there is Evil in the world. Which is sad even if it's necessary knowledge.
The Approach of Evil Love was abandoned for coloring, but we'll see where it goes. For now, there is a girl, Ida. She is eighteen, at school, and I’m assuming, about to be approached by Evil Love. This novel could be very educational. For me. How does a six-year-old girl conceive of this sort of thing?
I record things my kids say because their speech is a window into the child brain. The view is sometimes funny, sometimes sad but definitely one of the most fascinating mindscapes in the world. Maybe there isn't a child in your life, but someone else to listen to, someone else who will reveal to you a most interesting thing about the way a mind works.
Ernest Hemingway said, "I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen." And now . . . it's time for me to stop rambling and do that. One of my children just said, "Dad, is there such thing as a meatatarian?" Guess she's not fooled by the creamed spinach I advertised as "Just like macoroni and cheese but with spinach instead of noodles."
*I tell the kiddos when I've just caught them on voice memo. They love to listen and laugh at these recordings now, but no way will they let me do this in the teen years. Also, we keep a family quote book in our kitchen, which I highly recommend. This is favorite reading material for all of us.
Not the kind where you have a baby and are up every few hours feeding, changing and rocking that precious but exhausting newborn nugget. Nope, this is the kind of maternity leave where you realize your world is compressing again, where you shed non-essentials and focus on family. It's the end-of-the-school-year season, and these babies of mine have grown into big, walking, talking, independent creatures with lives of their own, lives that involve lots of carpooling and mommy management. 
