Austin and I had a good talk tonight. We used a "talking sword," so we wouldn't interrupt one another. It's a plastic toy sword that we tossed across the living room to each other, when we switched speakers.
The conversation was about his learning, my hopes and dreams for him, and a few tangential topics.
At one point, he came up with an analogy I really liked.
"Mom, you should try to stop thinking about yourself and dad as two separate people, and start seeing you more as one. It's like you are a cloud looking down on a lake and thinking, 'You have more water than me," when the lake is getting it's water from you!"
This was his insightful feedback after I talked about how grateful I was that dad works so hard and has a really good job, and how much more we might be able to do and afford if I were also working.
Austin asked me who would look after him, Aidan and Aaron if both parents were working full-time. I told him someone else would, to which he promptly responded, "No. Because there's no river in this system. There's only a cloud, a lake and the air in between them." He says the air represents A1, A2, A3 and Iain.
I really like this analogy, and it's even growing on me, as it hits me on new levels. We talked about how clouds hold more water than we can easily imagine (remembering the podcast we listened to on the boat). We had listened to a short recording of "How much do hurricane's weigh?" from NPR's Krulwich on Science.
