Holding on

Tonight as I lay beside you my five year old boy I felt what a journey it has already been. My mind flashed images of the last five cycles of seasons. The first winter hot cocoa's, the snowy adventures, the quiet sick days on the couch with stories....the days when just the two of us head off to Echo and ate our snack at the little silver tables together....The summer trips to Shelburne Farms....when you first teetered upon the tractors and later when you grew to run the place with your knowledge of cheese making and cow milking. All the play dates and snack plates and tickle tag and pretend monsters chasing you around the table. All the dinner parties with friends and family. Your journey in the world paves the way for my journey as a mother. So when you hit a new phase....when you shift and change and seem confused....well, then I am confused. As you meet new challenges in your understanding of the world..I too meet new challenges in how to help you through.
Lukas loves his baby doodee....he loves his thumb....he loves quiet moments in the corner just watching and thinking and dreaming but latley he won't put his "baby" down. He seeks her out all the time. He wants her at the table when he is eating. He wanted to take her into the bath tonight. He seems to need to know where she is at all times. He has also been acting out, not listening, not making eye contact when he talks with us. Being disrespectful with his tone of voice...demanding....rude. I am so afraid, so afraid that we were given this beautiful, intelligent, perfect boy and somehow we are making mistakes that will bury that boy.
As I lay beside little Lukas tonight I felt such love, such tenderness....he wrote a story the other day...his first story called "The Adventures of Nobody" about an invisible man who lives in an invisible house that flys. He usually smiles but sometimes leaves his smile at home in a box. Naturally, being who I am I begin to analyze his story and wonder who "nobody" is and why he leaves his smile at home in a box and why Lukas wants his "baby" more and I spin myself into all sorts of reasons. The reasons are my reigns.....my desperate attempt to try to understand and control what is happening to him. Tonight as he raged in a tantrum of exhaustion and tears about one of his many wants I slowly sunk to the floor and just held him. I could literally feel his body soften into me and I imagined that he was a baby....just a baby crying who needed to be held. Sometimes that is all that is needed....all any of us need....to just be held.