Thursday, May 27, 2010

Bill - wherever you are, I need you now.

Maybe it's because I'm tired or perhaps it's because I'm a little more emotionally responsible than the average male...but my son really tugged at my heart strings today. And my stoic facade cracked.

Xavier has been attending kindergarten. He started just a few weeks ago and he has been enjoying it. He has boundless energy and at the age of three and a bit, Xavy just wants to get in, grab the world with both hands and live it to the full. It's wonderful to experience as a father and his enthusiasm is certainly infectious.

At kindergarten, Xavy has found a little play mate, a little girl named Clare whom he so innocently besotted in. They have played together, sat together, painted and built and shared their milk. And Xavy's cheeks have flushed red whenever he talks about her when he comes home. It's a delightful thing to observe - an innocent, childhood friendship in the burgeoning tradition of say a 'Kevin and Winnie/Wonder Years' kinda thing.

Today, however, something happened to have us all slam into a - figurative - wall.

Xavy came home from kindergarten with a look and a demeanour that could only be described as devastation.

Clare didn't want to play with him today.

And he didn't quite get the message right away. He persisted in trying to join in with what Clare was doing but she apparently and eventually told him to leave her alone - loudly as it were - and it would appear that Xavy's heart got a little trampled.

He was very quiet when he got home. His eyes were swollen with tears and the bottom lip was quivering on and off. Emily, my partner, explained to me what the kindergarten teacher had explained to her.

What can one say? I was completely stumped.

Welcome to the world of socialization, I guess. On one hand, there's the whole thing about Xavier having to learn about what is appropriate and acceptable in the whole social interaction thing/realm/sphere...

But man, he got his heart trampled on today. And do you know what he said to me during bath time this evening?

"I didn't mean to Daddy. I'm sorry I upsetted her"

*heart strings tah-wanged and snapped big time*

All rational thought got swept away and I was quite unable to offer any sort of fatherly "stuff". Xavy was just shell shocked.

See - this is all academic really. I, as a parent, should be more than capable of explaining what's right and wrong and all that important stuff - but when a child already, kinda 'gets it', as Xavy did, there's no where to go.

Am I making any sense here?

In the end, all I could do was give him lots of cuddles and tell him that maybe next week it will all be better.

After bath time, we sat down to our new favorite thing - watching re-runs of "The Cosby Show" on pay-TV. The instant those opening credits started, where Bill "Heathcliff Huxtable" Cosby begins dancing with each of the members of the Huxtable family, pulling those impossibly elastic facial expressions, all of our hearts seemed a little less heavy.

Xavy loves it when Bill Cosby pulls those faces.

But, as I said at the beginning - maybe it's just because I'm tired at the moment...I'm just a big baby.

I think I've just added another book to my 'to read' list for the winter...

DFA.


2 comments:

  1. Oh man - what a sweetheart. Funny how parenting goes from simply maintaining life to now trying to support it and teach it? This stage is a bit more confusing for sure (and I was already lost).

    But not to worry - if your son grows up to look anything like his mum and dad - he'll have girls falling all over him in a few years!

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  2. Bless his heart. I remember when I was about 4 years old, there was this group of girls at my kindergarten that I wanted to be a part of so badly - but they wouldn't play with me, either. It hurts!!

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