Playing in the sand

I am watch­ing my daugh­ter play­ing in the sand. She sings some unknown or imag­i­nary song. She is alone. No oth­er kids are at the play­ground near our house. I won­der if she notices, at such a young age, that she might miss the com­pa­ny of oth­er peo­ple. Most of the time, she is alone with me. We are alone.

She is pour­ing the sand through the blue forks some­one for­got in the sand. When we arrived, the sand­box was full of plas­tic gar­den­ing tools and toys. Kids usu­al­ly leave them behind, and moms are pre­oc­cu­pied tak­ing care of tod­dlers, often with anoth­er baby attached to them. So, they just leave the toys behind. Usu­al­ly, my daugh­ter and I for­get to bring our own toys.

“Mama, look!” Sofie turns towards me, throw­ing sand in the air. Her thin, straight, light brown hair falls into her eyes. My mom nags that I didn’t make her wear hair acces­sories ear­li­er. Now she is not used to them. She nev­er wears pony­tails or hair­pins to keep her hair out of her eyes. Instead, she has got­ten used to peek­ing through her hair, like a cur­tain falling from her fore­head.

“Look, Mama!” she screams again.
She made a lit­tle fig­ure in the sand with a yel­low plas­tic mold and wants me to see it.
“Oh, a lit­tle duck, right?” I ask, bare­ly look­ing in her direc­tion. I was too into my phone.
“No! A hun.” she says.
“Oh, a hund?” I mis­un­der­stand her words.
“No, Mama. A hun.” She repeats impa­tient­ly.
She shoves the lit­tle mold into my face, where I can’t pre­tend to look away but actu­al­ly have to.
“Ahh, kokos­ka,” I final­ly under­stand.

She con­tin­ues talk­ing while I am absorbed in my phone. The bench I’m sit­ting on is a bit uncom­fort­able — it’s a green met­al fence with holes in it. Prob­a­bly designed by men. In this atmos­phere, some time pass­es. But not for her, more for me. Even fif­teen min­utes seems long to me. I just want to go home and lie com­fort­ably on my couch.

Sofie is still in the sand, wear­ing her pret­ty new knit­ted pullover that we just bought. It’s in the col­ors of a rain­bow — her favorite col­or com­bi­na­tion. The sweater has lit­tle holes in it because it’s a sum­mer pullover. Pas­tel col­ors suit her, I think to myself.

I look around. The sand­box is fenced by nat­ur­al stones lying on the edges. They are big piles of rocks — flat ones, so peo­ple can sit on them. Anoth­er lay­er of fence is made from round­ed wood­en piles. Sofie is sit­ting in the sand, and in front of her, there is one flat rock. She is clean­ing the sand from it, mak­ing a table out of it.

“Mama, look at my new Stein!” she says, turn­ing to me.
“Ja, I see. Very nice,” I reply qui­et­ly. Why do I have to think so hard about what to say to my daugh­ter? It should just come nat­u­ral­ly. And it prob­a­bly would if I had her in my twen­ties. Now, in my late thir­ties, begin­ning of for­ties, life just hits hard. The changes we go through at this age are obvi­ous. We are more tired, we lack ener­gy. Most impor­tant­ly, espe­cial­ly after these long win­ters with­out sun, we feel life­less. So, how can I pos­si­bly help my daugh­ter? How can I pre­pare her for life when I myself don’t believe in it? And yet I must teach her so many things — the things I used to know. Now I am get­ting too lazy to main­tain that knowl­edge or to fol­low the beliefs I used to have.

“Uuu­u­u­u­uu,” she is very excit­ed about some­thing. Her chant­i­ng inter­rupts my thoughts and brings me back to the present.
I look at her smil­ing, hap­py face.
“What is it, Sofie?”

The smile stretch­es all over her face. She tells me she is hap­py because her papa is com­ing home tonight. He works a lot and is on a trip — work­ing in a city about 500 km from us. He is most­ly absent for work, and she miss­es him. Often, in the evenings, she cries, call­ing for him. Some­times the same hap­pens when she is over­whelmed with her emo­tions and I am not enough. Or, actu­al­ly, I am caus­ing her dis­tress by try­ing to set bound­aries for her. This is the time when she turns to oth­er com­fort­ing things that could help her — like want­i­ng milk or call­ing for papa.

We are still on the play­ground. The clock is mov­ing toward sev­en in the evening. Most of the chil­dren her age are prob­a­bly already ready for bed. But with us, it is dif­fer­ent. We don’t have a bed­time rou­tine, although they say we should cre­ate one. But I don’t like rules — or rou­tines. So, we are still out­side, wait­ing for the sun­set.

I lis­ten to Sofie, who is still singing some ran­dom songs, or just talk­ing poet­i­cal­ly. I can’t under­stand it all. She speaks Ger­man at times.

She is build­ing a down­hill slope with the sand, reach­ing from the top of the stone to her feet. She is pol­ish­ing it, try­ing to make it stay. But the sand is slip­ping down­hill. It’s not real­ly sand, more like gran­u­lat­ed stone. It’s hard to mold. So she can’t make any­thing sol­id out of it. Soon after it is built, the shape dis­solves.

“Mama, mama!” she shouts. Her eyes are wide, her mouth open. She stands up and starts to run from the sand­box toward her green roller. We parked it by a near­by tree.

“O‑o!” she screams to the wind that sud­den­ly start­ed to blow. It lifts her hair into the air, away from her face.
“Let’s go, Mama!” she yells. She des­per­ate­ly wants to leave because she’s not used to strong wind. Her over­re­ac­tion comes from me. In terms of not know­ing some­times what we are doing as par­ents, we exag­ger­ate often. We exag­ger­ate because we might have seen the same reac­tion from oth­er par­ents. We exag­ger­ate because we think this way we are enter­tain­ing our chil­dren more. We exag­ger­ate to get what we want, try­ing to fool them. After all, we exag­ger­ate too often, too much.

“I’m com­ing,” I say. “Come here and put your jack­et on.” I try to dress her and zip her jack­et all the way up to her chin. It’s a bit cold, and I real­ly don’t want her to catch a cold.

Now that we’ve final­ly made it out of the dan­ger zone — it’s the end of March and we have made it through this year only with scar­let fever — I’m care­ful.

The wind starts to blow hard­er. I like the sound and smell of it. Spring wind always brings fresh­ness with it. Just like the wind in the fall brings the smell of snow togeth­er with smoke from chim­neys. It always reminds me of anoth­er time, when I was younger. Back then, we were always play­ing out­side, no mat­ter the weath­er. And we were nev­er alone, like today’s kids. There were usu­al­ly ten to fif­teen chil­dren, most of the time.

But I remem­ber that even as a kid, I need­ed at least an hour a day to be alone. Just me. I would take my dog and pre­tend I had to walk him. That was my time to clear my head. I’d sit on the front stairs of an old wag­on we had in the yard, just look­ing up at the sky, let­ting my thoughts run freely.

I would remem­ber peo­ple who had passed, think­ing — it can’t be that bad. Some peo­ple have already done it. They died. They are released.
It’s just some­thing I will have to do too.
And if they could do it, I can too.
That was always my final thought.

I check on Sofie. She’s become quite fast with her roller. She’s even learned how to use the brakes. Before, she used to stop with her legs — her shoes.

“Watch on your left,” I call after her. She’s still not aware that parked cars on her left can sud­den­ly reverse.
“Ja, Mama. I’m watch­ing,” she answers, already annoyed.

But this is just how it has to be, right? Kids get annoyed by their par­ents.

I’m suf­fo­cat­ing her — just like mine did to me.
Every step, every move­ment accom­pa­nied by warn­ings and instruc­tions. It’s too much. I have to stop that.

Sofie is so much like me — very sen­si­tive, but also very, very stub­born.
And if I keep going like this, we’ll be fight­ing con­stant­ly.
I need to give her more free­dom. More space to make her own deci­sions.
I need to learn how to guide her.