At times, my 10-year-old seems quite grown up, with opinions and ideas about how the world works that are sophisticated and have an internal logic, even if they don’t always match facts that he hasn’t yet encountered about the world. At other times, he still responds as the young boy he is. He is both, simultaneously. Not for long, of course. The balance will shift and he will be more man than boy. But for today, he walks the tightrope of both worlds.
I
In a matter of just a few days, my son has grown taller, about a good inch, When I commented on it, showing him that now the top of his head is almost to my shoulder, he replied cheerfully, “So that’s why you look so small.”
He seems to like the idea of gaining on me. When all three of us were in the kitchen this morning, he told my husband how he thinks I’m getting smaller. Gleam in his eye.
I told him that soon he’ll be looking down on my pointy little head.
“You don’t have a pointy head,” he said, defending me against my own statement. “You have no idea what the top of my head looks like!” I replied, joking. “I will soon,” he proclaimed, half a dare, half not really believing it.
Much merriment, as three bodies swerved and collided in our too-small kitchen, hot cereal and coffee on one counter, camp lunch preparation plus breakfast on another, and dinner fixings edging close behind.
“When you’re looking down on me from up above,” I added, “be kind to me.”
“Of course I will,” he professed earnestly, embodying the grown-up good guy he’s becoming. And I believe him.
II
The other night, during a terrific Macbeth performance in the park, somewhere between the pasta salad and the roast chicken, my son lost another tooth. A back tooth – a substantial-looking tooth – yet he was rather laissez-faire about it, and kept on munching to the sword fights and witches and bloody mess that Lord and Lady Macbeth create every time.
I’m pretty sure he knows – and he’s pretty sure I know he knows – that the Tooth Fairy isn’t real, or rather, that I’m the Tooth Fairy. Once the Tooth Fairy left him a computer-generated note, in pink script, signed, “T.F.” – which created only a slight vacillation between belief and disbelief. His last tooth was met with a fresh $10 bill from the relative he was spending the night with – not even a pretense of magic, but as it was the highest amount he’d ever received for a body part, it seemed to work.
The night before last was my turn to vacillate. I know he doesn’t believe, yet I saw him take the tooth and wrap it up in a paper towel, slip it in his pocket, and take it home from our picnic. Saw him take it down to his room and put it under his pillow. But he knows it’s just a pure cash-for-tooth transaction, knows that it’s my wallet the cash is coming out of – and I let my sun-drenched, post-Shakespearean fatigue lead me to just go to sleep.
“I guess the Tooth Fairy was busy last night,” he said, before even “Good morning.” Hmmmm, I thought. “Hmmmm,” I replied, buying some seconds. “There might have been a lot of kids who lost teeth yesterday.” A slight twinkle in my eyes. And that was the end of it. He went on to have a full 10-year-old day at camp, and as he was heading to bed last night, he took the paper-towel tooth packet, which I didn’t realize had been on the kitchen table all day, and took it back down to his room. “For tonight,” he said.
“Got it,” I said, but not to him. This was direct, clear communication. Even as he’s getting closer to seeing me – literally – eye to eye, even as he has adventures on his own (like yesterday’s first day at a camp he’s not been to before), even as he moves closer and closer to that external world, where Mothers are left behind (and returned to – for all the mothers of boys out there, don’t fret – we don’t lose our sons permanently, but we do stay in a realm they often leave, and we cannot, should not, follow them out, but wait for their return. Our job is to build up that realm so that it doesn’t have big gaping holes in it that we then require our children to fill . . . that’s the surefire way to eject boys from our lives and make it so they don’t want to return – but that’s getting me off topic). Even as all this is happening, his young boy self still needs the magic.
So this morning he’ll find five far-less-than-crisp singles under his pillow – it will look exactly like the stack of non-ceremonial singles he’d find in my wallet, although now my wallet is empty.
I’m not sure what he will say, but that probably doesn’t matter. For this moment, he wanted – needed – the magic of childhood, where parental reliability forms the backdrop of safety. For a mere $5, I gave him just that – the magic of being seen by the people he loves, which will create today’s fuel to head out into the large, unpredictable world.
I
In a matter of just a few days, my son has grown taller, about a good inch, When I commented on it, showing him that now the top of his head is almost to my shoulder, he replied cheerfully, “So that’s why you look so small.”
He seems to like the idea of gaining on me. When all three of us were in the kitchen this morning, he told my husband how he thinks I’m getting smaller. Gleam in his eye.
I told him that soon he’ll be looking down on my pointy little head.
“You don’t have a pointy head,” he said, defending me against my own statement. “You have no idea what the top of my head looks like!” I replied, joking. “I will soon,” he proclaimed, half a dare, half not really believing it.
Much merriment, as three bodies swerved and collided in our too-small kitchen, hot cereal and coffee on one counter, camp lunch preparation plus breakfast on another, and dinner fixings edging close behind.
“When you’re looking down on me from up above,” I added, “be kind to me.”
“Of course I will,” he professed earnestly, embodying the grown-up good guy he’s becoming. And I believe him.
II
The other night, during a terrific Macbeth performance in the park, somewhere between the pasta salad and the roast chicken, my son lost another tooth. A back tooth – a substantial-looking tooth – yet he was rather laissez-faire about it, and kept on munching to the sword fights and witches and bloody mess that Lord and Lady Macbeth create every time.
I’m pretty sure he knows – and he’s pretty sure I know he knows – that the Tooth Fairy isn’t real, or rather, that I’m the Tooth Fairy. Once the Tooth Fairy left him a computer-generated note, in pink script, signed, “T.F.” – which created only a slight vacillation between belief and disbelief. His last tooth was met with a fresh $10 bill from the relative he was spending the night with – not even a pretense of magic, but as it was the highest amount he’d ever received for a body part, it seemed to work.
The night before last was my turn to vacillate. I know he doesn’t believe, yet I saw him take the tooth and wrap it up in a paper towel, slip it in his pocket, and take it home from our picnic. Saw him take it down to his room and put it under his pillow. But he knows it’s just a pure cash-for-tooth transaction, knows that it’s my wallet the cash is coming out of – and I let my sun-drenched, post-Shakespearean fatigue lead me to just go to sleep.
“I guess the Tooth Fairy was busy last night,” he said, before even “Good morning.” Hmmmm, I thought. “Hmmmm,” I replied, buying some seconds. “There might have been a lot of kids who lost teeth yesterday.” A slight twinkle in my eyes. And that was the end of it. He went on to have a full 10-year-old day at camp, and as he was heading to bed last night, he took the paper-towel tooth packet, which I didn’t realize had been on the kitchen table all day, and took it back down to his room. “For tonight,” he said.
“Got it,” I said, but not to him. This was direct, clear communication. Even as he’s getting closer to seeing me – literally – eye to eye, even as he has adventures on his own (like yesterday’s first day at a camp he’s not been to before), even as he moves closer and closer to that external world, where Mothers are left behind (and returned to – for all the mothers of boys out there, don’t fret – we don’t lose our sons permanently, but we do stay in a realm they often leave, and we cannot, should not, follow them out, but wait for their return. Our job is to build up that realm so that it doesn’t have big gaping holes in it that we then require our children to fill . . . that’s the surefire way to eject boys from our lives and make it so they don’t want to return – but that’s getting me off topic). Even as all this is happening, his young boy self still needs the magic.
So this morning he’ll find five far-less-than-crisp singles under his pillow – it will look exactly like the stack of non-ceremonial singles he’d find in my wallet, although now my wallet is empty.
I’m not sure what he will say, but that probably doesn’t matter. For this moment, he wanted – needed – the magic of childhood, where parental reliability forms the backdrop of safety. For a mere $5, I gave him just that – the magic of being seen by the people he loves, which will create today’s fuel to head out into the large, unpredictable world.
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