Curious?
Since he was born, my oldest son has shown a most remarkable proclivity for being JUST LIKE ME. Even before it was really possible. I mean he looked JUST LIKE ME pretty much right after getting wiped off by the nurses. That broke my heart, but just as a consolation, his face has become so much like his mother's that if you photoshopped out the hair, and put his face over my wife's, well, the resemblence is so close, that even my-wmil would be confused. (that's code for "my wonderful-mother-in-law", for those of you who don't regularly receive e-mails from her yourself).
Anyways, since being wiped off, he's shown the same sorts of compulsive needs that his slap-happy-pappy has, for example: cleanliness of the hands. Ordliness of food during presentation, dislike for very surprising noises, tendency to isolate self in quiet modes of self-enlightenment and entertainment, pleasure in performing for an audience, verbosity, mechanical skills beyond his maturity, a strong preference for order and routine to surprise and adventure, a gift for sarcasm and a tendency to respond to things emotionally before intellectually (not sure about that one?). And he's just 4 years old.
About three and a-half years ago, I began to notice that my attitude toward the world was drastically darker than it should be. I was frequently tired, and always felt sick and nauseous. After a year of living with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, my wife started encouraging me to consider talking to a counselor, or perhaps talk with our doctor about starting a pharmaceutical therapy to ease me back out the blackness. Since that time, my perspective on myself has been changed quite a bit.
I have recognized in myself, among many, many things, a strong inclination to worry. Not like I’m worried it’s going to rain, more like, I’m worried that this bronchitis is actually lung cancer. This nervous feeling in the pit of my stomach is nausea, and while I’m playing on stage, I’m going to throw up. In the laps of the front row. That’s how it started. Then I started having little panic attacks-I’d imagine showing my son the waterfalls where me and my brother used to go swimming, and I’d jump off a cliff into the water, and he, trusting my judgement and not realizing that he doesn’t know how to swim, would follow me down and get carried away in the current. Nevermind that the “whirlpool” is over 1500 miles away.
I noticed something else: I keep things. Not like mementos from valentines day in grade 2. I mean boxes. Empty boxes. Boxes from appliances I’ve purchased, tools, whatever. I don’t know why I think I might be able to use the cardboard for something-I may need to prove to someone that I bought something from such-and-such a store. I don’t know. I keep little chunks of wood that just appeal to me on an aesthetic level. I keep stuffed animals that are ugly and deformed, just because they’re from my childhood. I keep rocks. I don’t know why. I have bottles and bottles of cologne from a prior life, when I wore cologne. Why?
We recently moved our youngest son, age 2 this week, into a room with his elder brother, aged 4. We’re expecting a new little baby in 2 months, and have a 3 bedroom house, so…
Tigger (that would be #1) has formed a …habit, shall we say, of packing all of his worldly possessions into a Diego back pack and carrying it around, everywhere, all the time, even wanting to wear it to the dinner table and to bed. He’d been doing this for awhile this summer. Actually that’s where it started for him. We thought we were going to sell our house, and were working like mad fiends. Trying to help us, my wmil (see above) was watching the boys at night so that me and my (radiant) wife could work late into the night without disturbing their sleep. Hence the Diego backpack.
This past winter though, I was so tired of always having to consider the needs of 2 boys (and a backpack), that I took it from him and started to empty it out on our kitchen table, just to see what was so important to him that he needed to carry it like the bag lady from the dump in the old Jim Henson movie, The Labyrinth. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it myself. Inside this youth’s backpack: a pair of fire-engine poofy slippers, a coloring book, another coloring book, with coloring pencils, a shoebox, stuffed with “Cars” hotwheels, a Lightning McQueen t-shirt, and another smaller backpack, containing Matchbox sized Thomas the Tank Engine railroad cars, his toothbrush, and several sundry items. I’m sure there was more, because when all the various containers had been emptied of their treasures, over half of my dining room table was covered with stuff. Some of the stuff in the backpack(s) had been given up for LOST! Seriously.
Today, after much disputation over properties and property rights, after a bite, a hit, a tractor snatching, a toe-stubbing, a head/neck squishing, and a rude awakening via biting of the foot, I watched, virtual tears in my spiritual eyes, as Tig packed up his bag again. I watched him as he packed it so full I was certain it would either burst, puking forth all it’s contents in a colorful plush puddle, or the kid would give up on the zipper. Well, I told you earlier, he has mad skillz, and somehow, after several minutes of manhandling and finessing, he managed to persuade the zipper to traverse the entire course. The bag sits now, at the foot of his bed as he naps, nary a wrinkle or a crease. It is packed so full of crap that the fabric is actually developing a rather unnerving elasticity.
Oh God. How can I raise him up so that he doesn’t suffer like I have? Can I teach him that he can’t control the world around him? That control is something you forever fight for, and never gain? That the frustration that breeds the fight only feeds itself until there’s nothing else left?
Can I love him enough that he won’t need to? Does the need to pack his bag up like this come from a feeling of being threatened? Can I insulate him from that? Will taking away the backpack teach him resilience in the face of perceived helplessness? Dependence on God’s Spirit? Or will it only cause him to feel an even greater need to hoard? To carry? To lose something that’s right there with you all along?
No comments:
Post a Comment