Tears of a Small Boy

I am starting to understand some things about who my son is, and perhaps who he will become.

The first realization came this week, when he insisted upon playing with the Halloween and the Christmas decorations, stored in boxes in the closet.

I remember vividly how much I LOVED to play with the Christmas decorations all year round. My barbies and paperdolls interacted regularly with the figurines from the nativity scene.

Bodhi is especially interested in "decorating." He wants to decorate every room so that it's "spooky." So we've been putting spiders on the shelves and hanging bats and owls from the wall. We turn the lights out and shine a flashlight in the bathtub, all the better if we turn on the light-up pumpkin and sit it on the bathroom counter while he takes a bath. In the dark.

So he was very adamant about getting the decorations out, was willing to pick up toys and take bites of his egg as long as I remembered to get the decorations out. At some point, he kept insisting there were more in the other closet, which I knew was not true. But he would not give in until he looked. I had to lift him up so he could look on the top shelf of the closet and make sure there was nothing interesting there. I was quite amused, because I saw in my son what I am sure my own mother must have seen in me: an indomitable will, aka "hardheaded." If you told me something I wanted to believe in was not true, there was no way to convince me otherwise. Still isn't, not really.

I see in my son that I am never going to be able to convince him with my words. He has the magical thinking that things are the way he believes them to be. Honestly? I am SO glad.

The other thing that actually happened today was really quite moving. We were on our way home from a birthday party outdoors in the park, and B had eaten a popsicle and played hard with some other boys for about an hour. So he asked that we listen to a Music Together CD, a compilation of kid's music from classes we used to take together when he was a baby. He kept asking me to turn it up LOUDER. So there we were, zipping down Mopac listening to "This train is bound for Glory" and so on, when this sad little ditty comes on. the gist of the song is "Whoever takes care of you will always come back to get you because they love you." It's a poignant little song, obviously meant to comfort a child who is upset over parting from mom or dad or whomever. So I look in the rearview mirror and there's Bodhi, eyes swollen with tears, little mouth turned upside down and quivering. Poor guy! He was clearly listening to the lyrics and feeling the melancholy of the song, because he was truly sad. I asked him if he was okay, and he said "I want to hear it again!" So I played it for him again, and the tears got bigger and started rolling down his cheeks. It really reminded me of how I could listen to certain sad songs as a kid and just cry and cry, listening over and over again and feeling the sorrow so deeply, so sweetly. So after it was over for the second time, I asked again if he was okay. And he said, "I can't talk." Oh. So I turned off the music and we rode in silence all the way home.

What a tender heart.