{"id":3640,"date":"2016-08-05T00:01:46","date_gmt":"2016-08-05T06:01:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.mops.org\/?p=3640"},"modified":"2016-08-05T00:01:46","modified_gmt":"2016-08-05T06:01:46","slug":"lets-play-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/lets-play-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Let\u2019s Play"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cMama, when are you going to play with me?\u201d<\/p>\n

Her fingers reach out like thin cords, pulling me upstairs to her pink hideaway constructed of blankets.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have to make dinner, Love,\u201d I say.<\/p>\n

Play seems impossible. I\u2019m busy wiping slick surfaces, concocting healthy meals, clicking through glassy task lists on my phone. If I glance at the latest Facebook feed, I\u2019ll see too many selfies and perfect travel destinations that cost money, time and calm kids \u2013 places where I can\u2019t go. I see a new threat in Europe, a homeless man\u2019s picture, a story on the Black Lives Matter movement, an article about the nature deficit in kids, the increase in anxiety. I cringe, picturing my two oldest kids with attention challenges and fear of underachievement.<\/p>\n

What cause should I take on today? My middle-aged psyche somersaults through the chaos, searching for a landing spot, but another text flashes and bings. I\u2019ve got alarms attempting to perfect me, connect me to those who become annoyed when I\u2019m unreachable.<\/p>\n

\u201cMama! Listen!\u201d My daughter grabs my tendinitis enflamed (from holding a phone, of courses) wrist. \u201cKitty is talking!\u201d<\/p>\n

She wants me in her imaginary world where our smiles link in real time, where rose soapy smells sail calmly among blankets, where a melodic morning dove \u201chooos\u201d through the white panes of a sticker-covered window. She needs me to get silly, to squish low to the ground and peek at the tiny flowers her clay cat clutches.<\/p>\n

No time to play!<\/em> I think. Kids should play with kids. <\/em>Then I remember the other wee ones are out doing some competitive, or highly productive scheduled thing.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile my daughter below tries to break through. She pursues the running, scrolling, reading, replying, loving, cooking, protecting, writing, stay-at-home, working mom who says stuff like \u201cDid you remember? Hurry! How could you forget? Oh, it\u2019s OK to be imperfect but Go! Come ON! Be patient. But hurry. Get ready! I love you! \u201d<\/p>\n

She must feel befuddled. But still she still she has the will to transport me to a place made where minds revel in made-up experiences, where she and I can go anywhere, be anyone for a while.<\/p>\n

How many days remain before she gives up, before she too dives into the play-less, productive, output oriented, perfectly imperfect world?<\/p>\n

\u201cWhich animal do ya want to carry upstairs, Mama?\u201d she asks. I glance down, noticing the new freckles on the edges of her cheeks. Her front teeth have descended a little farther.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll take the littlest one,\u201d I answer. \u201cAnd let\u2019s order pizza.\u201d<\/p>\n

Upstairs, under the soft blanket, I revel at the well-loved plush faces of penguins, kittens, squirrels organized in rows besides \u201cbeds\u201d covered in tissue.\u00a0 In here, everything makes sense. The pen is a tree, the Dixie cup a sink. There are no intruders. On her dresser are heaps of drawings where cats dress in polka dots and play with bugs, where squirrels carry acorn purses, where every living thing is equally adored. Everybody is good. Birds fly with music notes trailing after them.\u00a0 Smiles are as big as rainbows.<\/p>\n

I imagine how we were created. God had to relax, even crouch down, I bet \u2013 into the tiny soft places. He had to fill his heart, his breath, his being with an imagination large and supple enough to create light, sky, sun, stars \u2013 he had to be playful enough to create creatures as complicated and hilarious as we are.<\/p>\n

I pick up the penguin, gently placing imaginary food into its mouth.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s play,<\/em> I think.<\/p>\n

\n

\"AmyChallenger_x125\"Amy Aves Challenger is a writer and artist focusing on topics relating to the marginalized, families and children. She has been published regularly in The Huffington Post<\/em> and also in The Washington Post<\/em>, Mamalode.com<\/em>, and Brain, Child Magazine<\/em>. Her poems and a short story will be published in an upcoming anthology by Kind of A Hurricane Press<\/em>. Amy lives in Fairfield, CT where she runs a support group for special needs mothers and also leads a writing workshop. She is writing her first novel about a child with special needs. Her poetry can be read daily on twitter @amychallenger.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cMama, when are you going to play with me?\u201d Her fingers reach out like thin cords, pulling me upstairs to her pink hideaway constructed of blankets. \u201cI have to make dinner, Love,\u201d I say. Play seems impossible. I\u2019m busy wiping slick surfaces, concocting healthy meals, clicking through glassy task lists on my phone. If I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":177,"featured_media":3642,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_seopress_news_disabled":"","_seopress_video_disabled":"","_seopress_video":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas_manual":[],"_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable_all":"","_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas":[],"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[100,28],"tags":[56,109],"class_list":["post-3640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faith","category-fun","tag-motherhood","tag-play"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/177"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3640\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}