This morning I stood at the counter slicing an apple with a very sharp knife. I love this knife. If I had to escape my burning house I would grab this knife. It is totally replaceable and still it makes the cut. Literally.
The two boys are across from me. One casually stealing my apple slices while dodging the slicer. The other chattering about what a “weird” family we are. His evidence? That he likes red apples and I like green. I don’t find it particularly noteworthy but I am enjoying his animation so I go with it. Just 15 minutes earlier he was picking at the open wound of Middle School. “I don’t feel that well.” He told me with a wrinkled brow and energy of a well person. “I’m not sure I should go to school today.”
Across the world there are little Peggy Ann McKays (from the must memorize poem “Sick” by Shel Silversten (best baby gift ever.)) explaining their various ailments. Parents are feeling foreheads and rolling eyes. With this child I did neither. He has anticipated school with such excitement that I couldn’t keep him in the house in the mornings for years. This year is different. It is early days still I tell him (and me.) I’m sure he sits in a room full of future friends. But really I am not sure. I am remembering months of lunches in the band-room and imagining them passed down like my blue eyes (and unlike my love for green apples.) Steve reassures me that my son doesn’t care the way I do. The way I did. I know this is true, and still Oliver looks at me with the blue eyes we share and asks me to rescue him. To let him stay home where he can wrap himself in blankets and wait a while for the wider world.
I wondered how many other moms were standing at breakfast counters thinking about protecting kids from loneliness. For all of my talk of lazy parenting this is an area that I want to be able to take action in. I can’t do it. None of us can. We can’t find friends for them. We can’t create a sense of confidence in the classroom.
This weekend was a reprieve from both of our worrying. At a small dinner party he was the largest kid. Assigned the impossible task of keeping order by another parent he embraced it with the glee of new socks (“its not just that I have more socks…its the way they HUG me when I put them on”) With 6 cupcakes to divide amongst seven children he set aside fractions and skipped dessert. Other faces were smeared with frosting while he reported to the grownups that maybe sugar wouldn’t be helpful to calm down his charges. On the short ride home he described all kid yoga and his brother bragged “I didn’t help Ollie AT ALL. I worked against him.” “Yeah his brother agreed…you turned yoga into human dominos.” They laughed together at the memory.
Amongst the children of our friends he was as happy as he has always been. It is easier to be the biggest. The oldest.
Even if it means skipping the cupcake.
This is gorgeous and oh so much all the things I feel about my daughter. She’s much like her parents – prefers home and solitude and quiet. But I still want her to feel comfortable and wanted and accepted at school. And maybe she does. Maybe she’s really OK with herself. So hard. Thanks for sharing what I so often feel.
I’m going to imagine that it is better in real life than in my head…
I hated school. And possibly one of the reasons I don’t have kids of my own is I wouldn’t be able to force them through ‘school torture’ among other ‘tortures’.
I’m just glad I don’t need to go to school myself anymore. Life goal achieved.
School’s put for-ever!
You can tell Oliver is a wise old soul. He may have difficulty now, but he is going to find his friends and they are going to be loyal lifelong ones. He is a treasure, and the right friends will know it. <3
Agreed. Slow and steady wins something I think.
Tortoise, hare, just sayin’
Tortoises over here…
Any kid that gives up their cupcake for others is already somebody special.
I know…cupcakes!
What a kind, sensitive man you’ve raised.
I credit him! (Because I don’t want to blame myself for the negatives…)
It can be hard to make friends at that age, but it sounds like he’s a bright, intelligent, and confident young man who will have many friends. Giving up a cupcake was a very kind thing to do.
Agreed. And happily he won’t even need MANY friends. A small handful will do. And I mean SMALL handful.
It’s so hard to know what to do — I’ve actually let my son stay home before when I’ve known he’s not sick but then it made it harder the next day. So far, this year seems better. I hope your son makes new friends soon!
Don’t know why this made me cry, Anna. Maybe there is just too much truth in it for me to handle on a Monday. Thank you for writing it anyway.
Beautiful. Yes, I want to protect my daughter from loneliness and not fitting in. If only we could shield them from hurts…
I think the more thoughtful a child, the more introspective they are, and this makes being outgoing maybe more difficult. I was a inward child for a lot of my youth, and as was said above, I think it takes time.
I never gave up a cupcake though – that kid is a saint. Just sayin 🙂
Yeah. I’m not sure where he came from. He doesn’t get it from me. She writes shoving the final French fry in her mouth as her child looks on longingly.