Training Up a Child

I get sleepy, riding in the car. When I’m the passenger, I often do lots of napping on a long trip (unless people are talking to me). When I’m driving, I have some “staying awake” strategies. If there are passengers, we can chat, of course. Sometimes we take a box of question cards from a game like Trivial Pursuit or Ubi (a geography game which I do NOT like to play, and is so old that some of the answers are no longer accurate, but that just incites lively conversation, so it works out). And once, Jeremy and I played Twenty Questions all the way from Waco to San Angelo. (About 220 miles)

When I’m driving alone, I like to listen to audio books. But when I get sleepy, I sing.

When the boys were at TCU, in Fort Worth, I memorized the words to several hymns to sing on the way home from returning them back to school, in the dark, on I-35.

A couple of years ago, I was in the children’s part of the main library, and saw a Peter, Paul, and Mary CD. I checked it out, thinking it would be fun to listen to in the car, on an upcoming trip to North Carolina. Not only was it great for listening, I could also do a lot of singing along. Peter, Paul and Mary Around the Campfire was a two-disc set, and I purchased it. Along with Peter, Paul, and Mommy, which I thought might have songs Peter would like.

Typically, on a trip to Fort Worth these days, I put in a book, listen to it, and, almost always, I’ll be yawning by time I get to the interstate, at which point, I put in Peter, Paul, and Mary, and sing along. After a few trips, I realized that I would almost always be singing the same song as I crossed into the Hillsboro city limits. Always. “We Shall Overcome.” By then, while I didn’t feel like we’d overcome much, I had overcome sleepiness, and I could switch back to the book.

On one visit to Fort Worth, a year or so ago, we’d put Peter in the car, for me to take him someplace (library, store, museum, plant nursery, someplace), and he wasn’t happy about it. I put the music back in to try to capture his attention. After the song “Weave Me the Sunshine” played, Peter chirped, “Again!” And I punched the reverse arrow and replayed the song. “Again!” “Again!” “Again!” We wove our way through Fort Worth, happily. (April reports that Peter also knows most of the words to “Puff the Magic Dragon,” as well as portions of  “Day Is Done” and “Make-Believe Town.”)

I keep the Peter, Paul, and Mary music in David’s car, which is the car that either one of us uses on out-of-town trips. A couple of Fridays ago, David went to pick up Peter. When they, and I, got back home, David said, “We listened to Peter, Paul, and Mary, and we talked about the songs.”

Ready to ride

When we three got in the car the next day, Peter said, “Flowers!” David said, “He likes “Where Have All the Flowers Gone.” I cued it up. When I put him in the car early Tuesday morning, for the return trip to Fort Worth, he said, “I want to hear the Hammer one.” I looked at the contents list and found and played “If I Had a Hammer.” When the disc got to “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” Peter said, “I like the ‘long, long ago’ part.”

I kept Peter for several weeks, when he was an infant, while April finished out the school year as an elementary school art teacher. There was lots of rocking, and strolling, and feeding, and burping, and reading, and playing. And singing. Especially in those last afternoon minutes, when the hungry baby was anticipating his mama’s return. Sometimes I sang the little preschool songs I know from teaching young children. Sometimes I sang the songs I knew from my teen-aged years. The ones about the flowers and the hammers and things that are blowing in the wind.

Every generation wants to pass down information and understanding and good sense. I know about The Greatest Generation and my own Boomer Generation. Beyond that, I can’t keep track. Gen-Xers. Millenials. Toddlers. (But then I found this article: Your Generational Identity is a Lie. So maybe I’m overthinking it.) There may be several “generational identity” labels between us and Peter. But I like to think that Peter will have some internal sensibilities about Peace and Love and Overcoming, because of the music we listened to together.