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| [original photo by slambo_42 via Flickr] |
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His father said, “He’s not like his sister, or even other boys. He’s a lot more emotional.”
Yes. I know this well. My son has cleaved to me for the last fifteen years. He surprised me first, pissing in my face during his inaugural diaper change. He hurt me first and second, my nipples pained with the shock of his first teeth erupted at age four months.
He’s really an empath, this boy. He gathers and carries the emotions of others, the little dustman sweeping childhood’s streets into a bin each day.
And I’m the one who empties the dustman’s bin, just as I’ve emptied his diaper, his pencil box, his backpack.
Years ago it had been habit with his much-older stepbrother that I asked about his day in the car on the way home from daycare. Ritually posing open-ended questions kept the boy awake and on his regular evening schedule. But my stepson was not chatty; he resisted both drowsiness and my inquiries.
So unlike my son, who dumps; buckets some days, tankers on others, but he dumps. In second grade he spilled about the little girl tormented by bullies; in fifth grade he disgorged group dynamics of classmates bucking for best reader. Every day was fraught with emotional turmoil; my son captured and delivered it all in a stream of consciousness, within the safety of mother’s automobile, between the school’s driveway and that of home.
It took all my strength not to pull over and weep with the overflow the day he told me his middle school classmate’s teen brother committed suicide. I was almost prepared for the emotional burden; a friend had called, warning me my teen daughter might be impacted as the deceased had been a classmate.
But no--it was my son who talked with and comforted the surviving sibling, a friend of his with whom he’d worked on class projects.
On rare occasion my kids had been allowed to use the car as their Maxwell Smart-ish “cone of silence,” within it permitted a single trenchant word when something particularly wretched earned rapid decompression afforded by an otherwise forbidden expression.
This dark day deserved such treatment. He asked if he could swear, once he’d offloaded his emotional freight.
Of course.
We both said it. He roared first, I seconded, the final harsh consonant fading as I pulled the car into the driveway.
Yes. I know this well. My son has cleaved to me for the last fifteen years. He surprised me first, pissing in my face during his inaugural diaper change. He hurt me first and second, my nipples pained with the shock of his first teeth erupted at age four months.
He’s really an empath, this boy. He gathers and carries the emotions of others, the little dustman sweeping childhood’s streets into a bin each day.
And I’m the one who empties the dustman’s bin, just as I’ve emptied his diaper, his pencil box, his backpack.
Years ago it had been habit with his much-older stepbrother that I asked about his day in the car on the way home from daycare. Ritually posing open-ended questions kept the boy awake and on his regular evening schedule. But my stepson was not chatty; he resisted both drowsiness and my inquiries.
So unlike my son, who dumps; buckets some days, tankers on others, but he dumps. In second grade he spilled about the little girl tormented by bullies; in fifth grade he disgorged group dynamics of classmates bucking for best reader. Every day was fraught with emotional turmoil; my son captured and delivered it all in a stream of consciousness, within the safety of mother’s automobile, between the school’s driveway and that of home.
It took all my strength not to pull over and weep with the overflow the day he told me his middle school classmate’s teen brother committed suicide. I was almost prepared for the emotional burden; a friend had called, warning me my teen daughter might be impacted as the deceased had been a classmate.
But no--it was my son who talked with and comforted the surviving sibling, a friend of his with whom he’d worked on class projects.
On rare occasion my kids had been allowed to use the car as their Maxwell Smart-ish “cone of silence,” within it permitted a single trenchant word when something particularly wretched earned rapid decompression afforded by an otherwise forbidden expression.
This dark day deserved such treatment. He asked if he could swear, once he’d offloaded his emotional freight.
Of course.
We both said it. He roared first, I seconded, the final harsh consonant fading as I pulled the car into the driveway.
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