Koala update: Four and a half years

At some point in the last six months, I stopped living with a little kid and started sharing a home with a boy. The first suspicion that our household had undergone some sort of transition was after a few sporadic mornings when I had the opportunity to creep into your room as the sun came up and gently wake you, watching your eyes grow from tiny slits to wide blue bulbs, soaking up the light, the time, my face, the day. Something about your fresh face on these mornings made me realize: this outstretched creature is a boy. My second clue was space. Not the talk of astronauts that had taken over (though firemen, Superman and police officers still reign supreme). The need for space, physical and mental, and more of it. That a room is not always enough to contain your energy. Sometimes it takes a speeding bike ride down the block. That we can’t gloss over answers to questions anymore. I stopped answering you with ‘I don’t know’. It won’t do. (So much so, that you think I know everything. You ask me why that is. For now I still have an answer to that.) Then there’s the more challenging stuff. The emotional theme of the last few months has been anger. The reactions to it have been a thing of ongoing process; both for us and for you. We’ve battled in some tough arenas, yelled and cried through some difficult matches, and I’ve absorbed quite a lot of heat from you.

And then in the last few weeks the equivalent of boy butterfly wings emerged. You can do your own personal brand of break dance, reason through a problem, wield a ‘sword’, play house, and look me in the eye and tell me you love me in what all seems like the same breath.

I believe that’s what being a boy is all about. I think this is a great start, Koala.


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