This Boy

My friend Lynn used to tell a story about my firstborn, Hank. She loved that boy so much and she was a big part of his life from the time he was born. Lynn was the kind of person who paid attention. No small detail of goodness or interest went unnoticed by her. But one day, Hank showed her a whole new level of awareness and she was always so charmed and grateful for that experience.
She and Hank were outside of the old Food Coop, waiting for me to finish up shopping and Hank said, "Aunt Lynn, do you want to take a journey?"
Yes. He talked like that, even when he was three, which is about how old he was at the time.
"Sure," she said.
"Okay, let's cross this puddle."
So they did.
"What did you see?" my serious boy asked her.
"Uh. Some water?"
"No. Let's do it again."
And he took her hand and showed her all the colors in the water from the oil runoff in the cement and he showed her other things too, like how you could see the reflection of the sky and the clouds and the trees right there in that puddle. An entire small universe in a puddle of water in a parking lot.
She never forgot that. She never grew tired of telling the story.
And Hank is still like that. There is nothing which escapes his attention. As Miss Maybelle pointed out in her beautiful post from the other day, Hank is an extremely wise and also smart person. He finds the quirk and the beauty and the humor and the depth of each and every situation he finds himself in. The beauty of the puddle, the mystery of the rainbow in the water.

I never wanted to be the sort of mother who made little companions of her children. I did not want them to ever feel that they were responsible for my happiness. I wanted them to be able to be children, to be able to go through childhood without the worries and cares and responsibilities which I'd had to experience in my childhood.
Well, of course life got in the way of that plan, but still- despite the fact that their father and I got divorced, I tried hard to shield them from my unhappiness, my sadnesses and depressions. My grown-up worries. I don't think I did a very good job of that. I was probably too young myself, and too wrapped up in my own problems and my own struggles. But I tried. Especially not to lean on them, to make them feel as if my problems were their problems. I remembered how the problems of childhood were big enough and often too big, for children. That they didn't need grown-up ones on their little shoulders.

But Hank- he so very often surprised me with his unasked for perceptions, his unbelievable wisdom and incredibly ingrained sensitivity. I mean, that boy took me to school and taught me half of what I know. He was always three steps ahead of me, always knew exactly who he was, never afraid to be that person. Never. He made me feel as if no matter what a botch I'd made of my life that it was ALL going to be okay. He was going to be fine and so were we all. I swear, he did.

I remember once when he was, again, about three. He wanted to learn to read because he wanted a magic kit and I'd told him that he couldn't have one until he could read the instructions because if someone else had to read them to him, it wouldn't be magic when he did the tricks.
"Okay. Teach me."
We got out the little Fischer Price reading desk with its letters and chalkboard and I showed him out if you put a "c" in front of "at" it made "cat" and if you put an "h" in front instead of "c" it made hat, and so forth.
"I know that," he said. And proceeded to show me that indeed he did and he could read not only hat and cat and fat and rat, but a lot of other words too. Words not of the "at" family. I got out a yellow legal tablet and started writing down simple words. He knew them all.
And th-at was that.
He could read.
All those books I'd read to him, all those hours watching Sesame Street, had resulted in him actually knowing how to read before he knew he could. Or, more likely, before I knew he could.
He got that magic kit soon thereafter and he did magic shows for us and he and his sister May put on other shows for us- Pay the rent! I cahn't pay the rent! and I'll never forget the Christmas I couldn't find the book for the ritual reading of The Night Before Christmas so little Hank sat up on the back of the sofa in his footie-pajamas and recited the whole damn thing from memory.
Whenever there was a group of children together, a common occurrence back in those hippie-take-your-kids-with-you-everywhere-days, Hank was always the one who organized the play. He was the director, the ringleader, the Hey! Why don't we try this? kid.
And all these years later, he still is.

You know, when your children are born, you look forward to all the things you're going to teach them. The alphabet, about how stars are not tiny things but huge things, as big as the whole earth or bigger, so far out into the night sky that their light is sometimes tens of thousands of years old. You can't wait to see your children grow-up and learn to tie their shoelaces, scramble eggs and write their name. You can't wait to see who they are going to be.

And then you realize- they are exactly who they are from the moment of birth. And they already know so very much more than you could ever imagine and then, they are teaching you. They are teaching you how to see out of a child's eyes, which are by far the most perceptive eyes. They are teaching you how to think with their child brains, unsullied by prejudiced ideas about how things should look, work, and be. They teach you the power of words, of patience, of the sheer, pure wonder and joy of learning.

When Hank was about one, he realized that everything had a name and that he had to learn them all. He would go around from the moment he woke up to the moment he went to sleep, pointing his pudgy little finger at everything and asking the same question, each time.
"Dat?" he would ask. And I would tell him the names. "Bird, cat, dog, tree, man, woman, butterfly, water, sandwich...." and on and on and on. And then one day he stopped. He knew everything.
But in a way, he has never stopped. Hank is still pointing his finger at everything and asking, "What is that?" He is still leading people through the puddles, saying, "What did you see?" He is still teaching me how to be who I am by being exactly who he is.

He is a pirate, he is a writer, he is a questioner, he is a partier, he is a friend, he is fiercely loyal, he is beloved. He is sly, he is open, he is honest, he is the go-to-guy for any arcane fact or figure than any of us need, and he is unquestionably who he is.

He is my teacher, my friend, my first child, my joy.

He makes me laugh so hard I cry. He makes me so proud to be his mama.
He is my Hank and there is no other like him on this earth.

"What did you see?" he asks and I always know that whatever it was that I saw, it was nothing compared to what he saw.

"Do you want to take a journey?" he might as well have asked the moment I first took him to my breast.

I do, son, I do. Always with you, I want to take a journey.
Show me what I should see. You're still teaching me.
You are like no other and I love you like no other and I am in awe that I am your mother.

Happy birthday, my boy.
I love you.