The Craftslete sleeps tonight

The Boy woke up screaming last night.

It was 2 a.m. on the dot. I was in my office, watching Colombo on DVD and ruminating on mortality… you know, the usual.

I was thinking about how after The Boy’s brush with victimhood at school, that he and we were tackling the problem head-on. He’s exhibiting moxy that I knew always had to be there, but had been dormant before.



He’s tackling Taikwondo again, and he’s taking it seriously. He had his pledge memorized between the first lesson and the second. He’s taking part and following directions. I can hear his voice above the other kids’ from time to time. And he only begins to flag toward the end of the lesson, when he just plain gets tired. We need to work on his stamina.

Which is where gymnastics will come in. The Missus suggested it and I think it’s a great idea. There’s a place right down the street that The Boy and I reconned today, and he loved it. First lesson Monday. If he hits that as hard as he has the Martial Arts… man, is he gonna be tired. And strong.

And God willing, confident.

And I realized that with all these new activities, we were turning him into a Big Little Kid (maybe a Little Big Kid?) that much quicker. With every effort we make to better prepare him for the world, we’re just placing one more layer of the world between him and us.

I can’t emphasize how special this kid is. There is not a single other like him in his peer group at school, not even the girls. He thinks in three-dimensions and is fascinated by nature and numbers (but not reading), and wants to make crafts for a living when he grows up. I was managing a meltdown the other day—ie: he was fire-engine red and screaming and I was talking quietly while I restricted privileges, one by one—until he howled, “You won’t let me do crafts ever again, and that’s what I want to do when I grow up!!”

Well, I had no idea. I knew he loves to make crafts with The Missus (see photo of craft table, top), but this was the first time he had expressed a specific interest related to his future. The Mathlete who has thought in 3D since toddlerhood wants to grow up to make cool stuff from common household items for a living. A popsicle stick to him isn’t a potential hazard to the Simple Dog,* it’s a canvas for his next flight of fancy.

My Dad would be appalled.

But this is the kid I want! I don’t frankly give a single fuck if he’s a chimp on the monkey bars or a demon on the baseball field. I was nothing like that either. But I did have a very thick skin by his age—physically and metaphorically—and had already learned to fend for myself in almost any circumstance. The Boy, on the other hand, has been brought up in a hazy, warm glow of constant love and encouragement. He doesn’t have the mad self-defense chops I had at his age. I worry that as bad as the world fucked me up, it’ll do worse to him unless we toughen him up, pronto.

And drive another wedge between us and his childhood which we have held so dear.

He and I read every day now. We go for walks around the block and play with walkie-talkies. We play board games and word games. I’ve set up a laptop for him with internet access and everything, and am looking for a proper school desk I can put in my office.

I figure until kids wise up and start playing with him at school, I couldn’t deny him my friendship at home. I’ll back off as soon as his personal life picks up. I’m sure he’ll see to it.

Which brings me back to tonight. I’m trying to train him to sleep through the night without wetting his bed. Toward that end, I got him a kick-ass Darth Vader alarm clock. I thought he would use the regular alarm function, but instead he’s chosen the creepy theme music and breathing of Darth Vader as his alarm to wake him up in the middle of the night to lighten his bladder. And every once in a while, the scary alarm noise catches him in a bad place and he wakes up screaming like the devil himself is on his tail. And that happened again tonight.

Like I said, I was up watching the first of the final run of Colombo episodes—feeling sad that we lost Peter Falk last year, thus the musings on mortality—when the screaming began. I beat The Missus in there by about 5 seconds, and she started out from a sound sleep. She came up, comforted the boy, saw I was fixing to deal with it, and went back to bed. I sat on his bed with him in my arms, our temples pressed together. I called him a butt-knuckle. Then I placed our foreheads together and whispered, “Let’s go potty.”

I waited for him outside the bathroom door. (I usually let the alarm wake him, then appear by his bedside when he’s done his business and tuck him back in, delivering a kiss to the top of his head, the back of his neck and a fanny pat.) But tonight I sensed he’d need a little more. I took his hand and he leaned his head against my arm, still slightly trembling. I stroked the back of his hand with my thumb and led him again to bed. I silently tucked him in and then, uncharacteristically for me, climbed in beside him and spooned with him till his breathing evened out.


That’s what I’m giving up, shoving him out of the nest as hard as I am. I know it’s what is best for him so I will continue, but with every advance he makes, another layer of my heart floats away on the breeze like a shed skin. The day will come when he doesn’t need me at all. I will have succeeded at the most important objective in my life and it will finish off what is left of my heart.

As long as he’s happy, I’m happy.


* Thanks and a tip o the hat to the blogger from whom I snitched this term.