LESSON #4: Sometimes What You BELIEVE to be Impossible is Simply Just Undiscovered

Shekinah with Midnight the black swan

It was clear when my sister Shekinah was born that five children was the maximum allowance for our family. Aside from any financial, emotional or physical strain an extra child might cause, two adults and five growing children were all that could fit in the Aucoin family Tarago. And we were not going to be one of those freakishly large families who travelled in a bus, or worse, in convoy. No siree. It was classier to just stop having children.

 

Growing up the eldest, I had heard stories of families who spoil the youngest. I made sure that wasn’t going to be the way our family worked. Instead, being the youngest Aucoin child was an experience akin to boot-camp… but not the fun exercisy type that’s trendy nowadays. It was more like a hard-core military training ground for becoming an effective older brother/sister. Not only were you expected to obey every command of those above you, but you were also blamed for any of their transgressions. It was a perfect system if you had younger, trusting siblings. I never imagined it was possible to be the youngest forever – none of us did. Even Ryan, the youngest for 6 whole years, had moved up the ranks to Lieutenant Commander, residing over his new Cadet sister. But that was all before my dad bought the Tarago.

LESSON #3: Crying is Sometimes the Preferred Alternative

L-R: Shawn, Minnie Mouse, Tara & Jason at Disney World

As adults, most of us have become experts in taking life’s small, unexpected turns in stride.Very few daily instances inspire a reaction bigger than a smile, a slight raise of an eyebrow or a small nod of the head. Not too happy and not overly sully… that’s the key. Being a responsible member of society demands that we be temperamentally just right for the Goldilocks around us.   

Children, on the other hand, aren’t expected to filter their emotions in the same way. This lack of adult mediocrity seems to give them carte blanche to unabashedly wear their emotions… not just on their sleeve, but on their entire body. When a 4 year old is happy, it envelops them. When they’re upset, you don’t have to coax it out of them. And when a child is either extraordinarily sad or extremely happy, it often creates a very physical reaction... emotions spilling out of their tiny bodies without warning, flooding their beings one feeling at a time.

As a child, I suffered from excitement-induced sore legs, which is not nearly as endearing as it sounds. The only remedy for my excruciating pain was to have my legs rubbed, sometimes for hours, until the pain (and tears) subsided. Unfortunately for my parents, I found nearly everything exciting – a change of seasons, first day of school, birthdays, Halloween, Easter. But nothing was as exciting as Christmas. If it were the New Millennium, I’m sure my parents would have simply given me a Valium in those weeks leading to Christmas morning. But it was the 80’s, decades before medicating children with drugs became the norm… so I wasn’t even given a Panadol. Instead, they’d lovingly spend hours each night taking turns rubbing my legs, hoping I’d somehow forget Christmas was around the corner.
 

Out of five children, I was the only one who suffered with excitement-induced sore legs.