Raising a child has given me a different perspective on genetics than I once had. As a young adult, I was convinced that we are all a product of our environment. Now I'm not so sure. My daughter's personality started emerging very, very early. One thing I noticed right off the bat was her empathy -- she started patting crying babies in daycare from the time she was nine months old, I was told by her teachers. I don't think we taught her that quite so fast.

My major in college was communications studies and my minor was human relations, but I remember little about what I learned except that I'm fascinated by how people communicate with each other and which barriers stand in our way as we try to relate to one another. We all have our shit: some of us are shy, some of us are pessimists, some of us struggle with nonverbal cues and some of us struggle with empathy. I thought this article talking about the kindness gene was interesting -- the researchers had one person describe something sad to another and the observers watched with the sound off, then rated the kindness of the listener:

People in the study were tested beforehand and found to have GG, AG or AA genotypes for the rs53576 DNA sequence of the oxytocin receptor (OXTR) gene.

People who have two copies of the G allele are generally judged as more empathetic, trusting and loving.

Those with AG or AA genotypes tend to say they feel less positive overall, and feel less parental sensitivity. Previous research has shown they also may have a higher risk of autism.

Another study said there's a reason we can spot kindness in each other -- those who are more kind are better equipped to help the group survive:

From a scientific perspective, Fowler added, these findings suggest the fascinating possibility that the process of contagion may have contributed to the evolution of cooperation: Groups with altruists in them will be more altruistic as a whole and more likely to survive than selfish groups.

The combination of these studies left me thinking about kindness and behavior. The second study basically said any kind of behavior can be contagious -- I extrapolated that to be that moods rub off. We behave like those with whom we hang, which then reminded me of the starling murmurations video. 

I'm going to attempt to emit kindness today and see where that takes me.

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/31158841 w=400&h=320]

Murmuration from Sophie Windsor Clive on Vimeo.

I woke up this morning and it was November. I laid in bed for several minutes, trying to remember October. It seemed to be one big pumpkin.

Last night while Beloved walked the little angel around the neighborhood with the Chiefs game thrumming in one ear, I stayed back to finish some work. After wrapping it up, the kids were still coming every few minutes, so I pulled up Ebay and started looking for fake American Girl stuff for Christmas presents. I thought about Christmas, which suddenly seemed to loom. Beloved mentioned Thanksgiving last weekend, and I realized it was only a few weeks away. The little angel looked suddenly taller as she drug herself up the hill at nine, lit by glow sticks, feet filthy and aching from those damn ballet flats.

As she slid into bed, she complained, again, about her feet. Without thinking, I said something about prom. Then as Beloved read books to her, I wandered back down to the couch and picked up my book and started reading, and it occurred to me that prom could come as quickly as November had, if I wasn't careful. 

I started working on a new novel, and now I have blog block.

What should I write about?

"The leaves are starting to fall, Mommy."

"Yes. That front tree will go first. It won't take long. It usually loses all its leaves a day or two after they start to drop. Then the three in the back take a lot longer."

"Maybe that's the mommy tree, showing her babies it's okay to drop their leaves: Just relax and let go."

I thought of all the layers to what she'd said, what leaves provide to a tree, what faith a tree would have to have the first time it dropped its leaves if trees have souls.

Stunned into silence, I watched the leaves flutter to the ground.

Tears streamed down the little angel's face this morning when I told her I thought I'd made a bad parenting decision yesterday by letting her wear the damn flats.

This was followed by the time-tested retort of BUT EVERYONE ELSE DOES!

I sat there, trying to seem impervious to her grief. I thought about the trials she has gone through these past fifteen days -- those trials of which I have not written but I'm sure many school-ager parents can guess but let's not discuss lest it come back to haunt my little second-grader -- the indignities she has suffered at the hands of her mother without as much complaint as I would've thought.

I thought about battles and which ones to pick.

I thought about how strongly I feel that she not dress provocatively and that flats do not offend my sensibilities at all, but the size 12.5 two-inch wedge sandals do.

I hemmed and I hawed as she sniffled and refused a hug.

Here's the thing I forgot to mention yesterday: She and I both have flat feet. I doggedly wore flats all throughout the eighties even though they made the soles of my feet cry out in pain. I let her wear flip flops on shortish trips this summer, but she wore sneaks and socks every day to summer camp, every time we went to the zoo, etc., no matter how hot it was. I don't know the science on flat feet and arch supports, but I know comfort.

And her feet are still growing.

Hem and haw.

Sniffle and whine.

I made her wear boots to school on an 80-degree day because she said they were the only thing that went with her sparkly leggings. 

IS THIS IMPORTANT?

So I cut her a deal: I would buy her insertable arch supports for the flats. Which I did, today. They don't have child-sized ones at CVS, but I'm hoping her feet are close enough to small adult size to make it work. I suppose we shall find out tonight. I told her if I could get arch supports that worked into her silly flats she could wear them on days she doesn't have PE.

When she was two, I let her wear twirly dresses every day to daycare as long as they had shorts under them. 

When she's fifteen, I may have to deal with bad nineties fashion come back to haunt us. 

I've decided to fight the biggest fashion battle for me: DRESS YOUR AGE. Dress like a little girl. While flats don't scream "seven years old" to me, I don't fundamentally object to them on that basis.

So I'm going to stick the arch supports in there and let it ride.

I've been meaning to write about The Finger Hug for a long time, but I never get around to doing it. I talked about it recently at a Hallmark blogger event for their Moments Between the Milestones campaign. If you want to see the video, it's here.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, that's completely natural, because I made it up. ha!

I've been spending 2-4 hours a day on my new least favorite motherhood extracurricular activity. I'll be back when I'm done with my project. I hope it's tomorrow. I really, really do.

The five of us sat outside -- Ma, Pa, Blondie, the little angel and me -- trying to capture the sound of birdsong and my parents' bubbling fountain in the background over our voices lovingly reading each other stories. (Disclosure: this isn't a review, but I did receive the books free from Hallmark when I attended a blogger event there on Friday -- more on that later.)

I had three of the recordable storybooks. Pa is the bedtime story reader in our family, so I wanted him to read one. Then we were all going to take turns reading the other two -- one for Blondie and one for us. On our first run-through, Blondie misted up a little and it was a poignant moment what with the birdsong and the bubbling fountain and that unicorn that came over the ridge right at the moment the last word was pronounced.

Then we tried to play it back.

Somehow we'd kept the recordings of certain pages and lost others, and the little angel kept scraping her chair and walking around with what she clearly thought were gossamer steps on the pavers but actually sounded like a bull elk wandering through Macy's.

Finally, we took the books inside. There was apparently some trick to laying them perfectly flat and perhaps daylight affected the little light-sensitive holes? So we recorded all three books over again, and when you press stop, it plays it back to you, then if you REALLY WANT TO BE SURE, you must then play the entire thing over when you are done, so all in all by the end we had listened to each other read these books approximately 32 times, yelling at Pa and Beloved every time they tried to have a conversation because OMG WE ARE RECORDING HERE and CAN'T YOU JUST WAIT ANOTHER 54 MINUTES?

Then we were done, and Pa wrote on the opening page of the book that he read "recorded on September 11, 2011," and I realized we hadn't even planned it, but it seemed entirely appropriate to be together on the ten-year anniversary of the scariest day in recent memory, recording our voices so we might always hear the inflections of love. Even though we came for the weekend not to commemorate September 11 but to help my parents fix a leak in their bathroom, but maybe that makes it even better.

The little angel will probably always wonder why 9/11 is such a big deal in the same way I could never understand why people could remember where they were when Kennedy was shot. I hope she never has a day in which she remembers exactly where she was when some horrible scary thing happens that rocks her faith in leadership or in humanity. It's not possible to protect her entirely, though, so ... the books. We wrap our children in as much familial love as we can, and we hope that shield of belonging and strength will be enough.