Slow down

It's not something that comes naturally to me, but I'm trying to learn.

Sam increasingly wants to walk, and I encourage this. He's doing so great, and I think for me, I'm patient with holding his hands so he can step down stairs like the other kids, instead of flopping onto his belly and sliding down feet first.

He works so hard at all of these physical challenges that most people take for granted. I do my best to slow down, slow Maya down -- which is no easy feat -- but we are one in the same. We move quickly by nature. We are always hustling from one distraction to the next, running and flitting.

Sam senses that. And as much as he wants to keep up with us, he more strongly wants to do things like us. He doesn't want to go down steps on his belly and knees at age 2 1/2, he wants to do his best to step down, one hand in mine and another on the railing, even though the lack of tension in his gluts will not actually allow him this physical movement. He will toss one straight leg out and use his upper body to move himself down to get footing.

I offer to hold his hand, and I don't rush him.

For somebody who is often in a hurry -- often late, often going, often cramming too much in -- I am learning a valuable lesson. I am slowing down. This is a shift for me. Suddenly I notice how quickly everyone around me wants to move. That was me two years ago. But now I look at them and wonder why, why are they in such a hurry?In a way, they make me sad.

I realize I have to learn patience, and understand that even if we're late, the extra five minutes it takes Sam to walk that distance isn't going to break us. There is some real beauty in this concept, particularly for someone who is used to rushing around.

Don't get me wrong, I have always rushed, but I also enjoy. You get used to living in a certain way. Although I had improved in punctuality before having children, I was and still am accustomed to constant motion. I think it's because I enjoy and am spontaneous that I find myself in a constant hurry, fighting to keep up with the social confines of things like time and schedules.

I am better at things like punctuality until things get too chaotic, and then I find myself back where I was as a teenager, being chided by my frustrated parents (only now it's me, or the director of Maya's preschool), because I'd missed yet another curfew. I can't blame them; now I'm on the other side of that and I realize the aggravation of a child who simply refuses to acknowledge any rules or authority, just like my sweet daughter, just like me.

I remember keeping up with my mother on our way to the mall, my small legs taking four steps to her one, because she walked so fast. It was fun for me. I loved to walk fast.

But something that is setting in for the very first time, something that would not have come if I'd not been forced to walk slowly, is that -- we can still be spontaneous and whimsical, even if we're not in a hurry.

If we're late to Maya's preschool, so what? We're paying for it.

The other day, we were taking a family walk. Sam opts to get pulled in the wagon for these walks often, because he sees his big sister ride in it and realizes it's age appropriate, whereas he is worried the stroller is not. He is extremely sensitive to anything that sets him apart in terms of physical capabilities. He's a smart boy. He knows he can't do what the other kids his age can do, but he works so hard, and as a result makes such amazing progress.

Maya was walking and Sam had decided to walk as well about midway through, seeing his idolized big sister flitting along, picking up scarlet leaves and tossing them into a stream.

Sam just can't go fast, and on any walk that lasts more than five minutes, he begins to waddle and swagger and even limp. At one point, he called out to us in frustration, "I can't keep up! I can't keep up Mommy!" But he didn't want me to pick him up, or put him in the wagon.

It was then that I began to work on my non-deliberate slow gait, just browsing as I walked, because I know Sam gets self-conscious if he's left behind. This is really a stretch for me; not only am I walking at about ten small steps per minute, but I have to make it seem as if I don't want to walk any faster.

What a learning experience that's been.

I was holding his hand crossing the street that Maya and Jim had crossed over probably five minutes prior, and I heard a motorcycle zooming up the road. I pointed it out to Sam, and the rider slowed down, waved and Sam and beeped. Maya and Jim were around the bend, they missed it all. Sam beamed with pride that he had been acknowledged by somebody as cool as a biker. For my 2.5-year-old boy, this was the highlight of the walk.

In the museum of Science the other day, we trekked from exhibit to exhibit.

When Sam climbs up into his stroller I know it's because he's had it. It hurts me because I see his energy level, I see his desire to run and play like all the other kids he sees, but he doesn't get frustrated. He just shouts, "Mommy, I wanna go up der!" and knees right up.

We stalled at several points to give him a break. At about 12:15, he told me he wanted to go to sleep. Instead I took them upstairs and fed them lunch, just so we could make the Harry Potter exhibit that we were going to at 1:30.

Lunch gave him some energy, and he was again determined to climb all 50 steps to the exhibit, all while I held his and Maya's hands and tried to toss my stroller up the stairs. Impossible you say?

Yes, which is why some kind grandmother taking her tween grandkids offered to hold Sam's hand up the stairs. Sometimes I hate to accept help like that from strangers, but realize I have to and like to pick the nice grandmother types.

After we reached the top of the FIFTY stairs (or what seemed like it) an employee, who had just said, "Oh, there's an elevator over there! There are no signs downstairs for it." (Thanks.) "Wow, look at that little guy! Look at his beautiful curls! And wow, he's walking really well!"

I still don't know how to react to that. I've never heard of anybody else being told that their nearly 3-year-old is walking well while struggling. My only guess is that they think he's a new walker, about 15 months old.

We were late as a result of all those stairs, and had to wait to get into the exhibit.

I began to get impatient, but realized this is another lesson in slowing down. The kids were wonderfully distracted by a nice English man they flew in to make the exhibit more realistic, who talked to us about his own child back in Britain. I felt lucky to have time to kill with my own kids. It really didn't matter that we missed our appointment; we were first in line for the next entry five minutes later.

The next day we were about to leave for errands. The kids were ignoring my requests, all ten of them, to move toward the door so we could leave, before I finally got frustrated and called out, "BYE!"

Suddenly Maya raced out after me as I went to put the reusable bags in the car. I saw Sam doing his best and most diligent run, which is admirable and heartbreaking at the same time. Then, as he often does, he tripped on his feet, but this time faceplanted into the front door.

I was there in an instant, and he was bawling. It takes a lot to get Sam to cry like that, a fact that was lost on the pediatrician we don't normally see. I made sure to tell him that when Sam falls, because of his skeletal dysplasia, his head always hits first. It's in the 80th percentile for size, and his weight is in the 0 percentile, and his weight in the 20th or so. He can't hold it up. I saw blood in his mouth, and his cheek began to swell before my eyes and turn purple. I was pretty sure he was OK, but I'm always worried about his head and neck.

So instead of starting on those errands, we rushed to the pediatrician. He was fine, and he is a trooper, so then the three of us made our way to Trader Joe's, then Whole Foods, and then ballet, before coming home to nap. (Him, not Maya and me.) It would have been a lot easier to have taken my time and not rushed, and avoided that extra errand and stress.

I'm seeing that more during our non-bodily injury days too. I've always been into nature, but I used to notice it more when I was out specifically observing it, too busy to see sometimes when buzzing from place to place.

Now we see everything just walking from the car to the front door of Maya's school -- a maple tree covered in fiery orange and red leaves with autumn sunlight streaming through, making it look as if it's on fire, ant hills, drainage pipes, low-flying airplanes, blooming flowers surprising us in November, clouds that look like dragons. Maya is slowing down with us, and we will actually stop in our tracks, even if we're late, to look at a flower or a pretty leaf.

Sometimes it's nice to slow down.