Ms. Understanding

"Oh no, Mom, a spider!" cries Nathan.

We've just gotten into the parked car after supper with friends at Pearl's Phatburger downtown.

"What? Where?" I fret, flailing around. I am not fond of spiders even at a distance, and the only phrase I've heard in Marin that includes distance and spider links them with "between you and the nearest" and concludes with "is never more than 14 inches."

"Dere, Mom, look dere!" he yells, pointing toward the windshield.

I try to change my focus, certain now it's actually in my purse instead of on the dashboard. "I still don't see it! Is it inside?"

"It's flashing red!" he insists, beginning to be frantic himself.

"Oh good Lord!" I do a quick mental inventory of my Venomous Spiders of the World files, even though I know very few of them live in California. "Wait a second --" I say, noticing the parking meter at last. "Do you mean the meter?"

"Yes, Mom, it's ekspidered!" he says, glad that I finally stopped being such an idiot.

My heart rate returning to normal, we pull away and I explain about the hours of operation and our local 6:00 p.m. cutoff.

I often imagine how frustrating it must be for a child -- infant to, say, 25 years -- to have things to say, yet to lack the ability or the right words to say them. This has been a personal bugbear of mine from childhood to the present day, actually: the ability to say my truth. Ask Dean -- even with therapy, it can take several days between a bugging event and my ability to say that I was bugged. And I'm MUCH better than before! Just call me Ms. Understanding.

We can give kids some of the tools they need, help them make connections between concepts and the terms that describe them, and then we need to listen hard. But even then, it seems to me that our experiences outpace our ability to describe them.