Raising Dragons

On Tuesday night, I found myself standing in my kitchen shredding zucchini for a bearded dragon.

This was not a sentence I expected to say four days earlier.

On Saturday, we were merely considering the possibility of getting a bearded dragon. By Tuesday, there was a custom enclosure in the living room, a refrigerator drawer suddenly dedicated to collard greens, squash, and bell peppers, and a three-year-old who had already introduced the dragon to the Little Mermaid's entire support staff.

To be fair, the idea wasn't entirely new. Back when Jimmy and I were dating, we'd spend weekends wandering local fish stores for his latest aquarium project, and I'd always stop to look at the bearded dragons. I thought they looked cool. Beyond that, I never gave them much thought.

At the time, it felt about as realistic as any of the other things you casually admire and then leave behind when you walk out of the store.

Of course, that was before Haisley. And it turns out there are very few things Jimmy wouldn't at least consider when his daughter is involved.

I'm beginning to suspect that one of the unexpected perks of parenthood is getting to revisit all the things you loved as a child and seeing whether your kids might love them too.

As I stood there sorting collard greens into storage containers and debating the optimal way to preserve shredded squash, I had one of those moments where you catch yourself from outside your own body and think, "How exactly did we get here?"

The obvious answer is that we got a bearded dragon. The less obvious answer is that this is how most things happen around here.

What starts as a simple idea rarely stays simple for long. A new project becomes a plan. A plan becomes a system. A system becomes a routine. Before you know it, there are labeled containers in the refrigerator and recurring events on the family calendar.

For a long time, I assumed that tendency was about efficiency. As I've gotten older, I've started to suspect it's about something else.

Because if efficiency were the goal, I could throw some greens in a bowl every morning and move on with my life. Instead, I found myself thinking about August and the school mornings that are coming sooner than I'm ready for.

I imagined a little girl standing on her learning tower helping tear collard greens into pieces before breakfast. I imagined her carrying Neyland's salad bowl to the enclosure and checking his water dish before we headed out the door. I imagined the conversations that happen when you're doing something together that doesn't feel important enough to be a lesson.

That's the thing nobody tells you about raising children.

The most important parts rarely happen during the big moments. They happen while you're unloading groceries, feeding animals, or standing at the kitchen counter preparing vegetables for a lizard that doesn't know the difference.

Children learn responsibility long before they understand the word. They learn it by participating in the care of something that depends on them. They learn it by helping. They learn it through repetition and by watching what the adults around them consistently make time for.

As far as Neyland is concerned, he moved into a larger house and acquired a tiny blonde employee who visits him throughout the day. But somewhere between the collard greens, the learning tower, and the stuffed fish lined up outside his enclosure, I realized the dragon wasn't really the point.

The point was creating another small rhythm in the life of our family. Another opportunity to practice showing up. Another chance to teach responsibility without calling it responsibility. Another ordinary thing that, repeated often enough, quietly becomes part of who we are.

Someday, Haisley won't remember when Neyland came home. She won't remember the hours we spent researching lighting, debating basking platforms, or figuring out the ideal way to store collard greens. What she'll remember is that there was a dragon in the living room. She'll remember carrying his salad bowl. She'll remember checking on him before school. She'll remember that caring for him was simply one of the things our family did.

And maybe that's how childhood works. Not through the big, memorable moments we try so hard to create, but through the ordinary rhythms that become so familiar they disappear into the background. The routines. The responsibilities. The small acts of care that, over time, shape the kind of person you're becoming.

The dragon thinks he got a new home.

What he actually got was the privilege of helping shape and raise a little girl.