Native
- Natasha Haught Fudge
- Apr 13, 2018
- 3 min read
Updated: Mar 26, 2021
A group of crows is called a murder. A group of butterflies is called a kaleidoscope.
There are gaggles of flightless geese. Once they gain some perspective, they rise as a flock.
A pride of lions.
A bask of crocodiles.
A bed of eels.
A tower of giraffes.
A parliament of owls.
A mischief of rats.
A murmuration of starlings.
A committee of vultures.
A caravan of gypsies.
A hail of bullets.
A host of angels.
I wondered what was the collective noun for children?
Apparently, it's an ingratitude of children. A chaos of children. A migraine of children.
Hmm. Sounds oddly personal. Sounds like someone at Merriam-Webster is a parent.
Children are ingrates. Recently I let my three children pick out a candy bar at the store. When we got to the car my son realized he had picked a mint flavored chocolate bar (gasp!) and glared at me in fury. Me! I had ruined the day because I let him pick out a candy bar that he didn't like. To his good fortune, his brother and sister came to his aid and volunteered their half of candy to him.
Children are definitely chaotic and migraine-enducing. See *Chuck E. Cheese and *sleep (lack thereof) for further evidence.
But still, these words fall short. Something is missing. I want to suggest another collective noun to accurately describe a group of children: a heartache of children.
Children have the gift of inciting fury and tenderness in you in a very short time frame. When my son wept his bitter tears at the candy bar I had bought him, his siblings didn't hesitate to increase his pleasure by dividing theirs. I saw his folly and his deliverance in a minute's time, all at the hands of my children. That frequent hardening and softening of my heart, that dance of compression and expansion is the heart-aching, beautiful story of parenthood.
Parenthood will break your heart. It breaks you when you pour over their baby pictures and realize those chubby, curly haired little ones don't exist anymore. That child is gone forever. As a parent, you are constantly losing your child. The cherubic, obnoxious toddler is dissolved into a freckled-faced kid who knows fractions better then you. Your child is yours but it doesn't take long to see you cannot keep them.
The other day, while driving through a sun lit field amidst a crown of mountains, I pulled over to take in the beauty. My children hopped out of the car, scurrying through high grass and poking in ditches with no hesitation. They watched hawks fly overhead and called out to them. They made predictions for when the trees would bloom. They looked right at home in the wild-they were home. Children are wild things, natives to their Father's natural world, pure and undefiled.
"The clearest way into the universe is through the forest wilderness." - John Muir
Watching them explore the earth that was new yet so familiar to them impressed upon me the irreplaceable work of children. Children will lead you through the universe if you let them; they will take you right to the feet of God. Through their uncanny ability to break and mend your heart, be of the world but not in it are the things of which redemption is made of. Children, parents, we need each other. Without our little ones to drive us mad and stretch us, how dull and limp our hearts would be. I hate to think of where I would be without that heartache.
*Chuck E. Cheese- the worst place ever.
*Sleep (lack thereof)- I always tired.
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