“Give him to me for a day, I’ll straighten him out for you.”

No. No, you wouldn’t.

See, if you were the answer to my son and some of his stranger and more challenging behaviors, well then, I suppose he would be your son, not mine.

But he’s mine.  And he came to me for a reason.

Sometimes I feel the green monster of jealousy rear its head as I observe your biddable children.  How it takes nothing but a stern word and they snap to it and walk the line.  How they amazingly walk themselves to time out and stay there without physical restraint.

Why won’t he do that? Why doesn’t that work for me? Why did you get these malleable, submissive children and I got this rock-hard, solidified soul of a child?

Then I remember…

Because he came to me for a reason.

I’ve tried to exert my will over his.  Goddamn it to hell, I’ve tried.  I tried so damn fucking hard a time or two that I was there, standing with him at the precipice of despair. One more push from me and he would have tumbled down the steep cliff and landed at the bottom, his spirit irreparably broken.

I shamelessly admit my will was the one that broke instead.

And this is why he came to me.

Because I’m the one who’s malleable – an essential characteristic God needs in a mother of a child with a old soul.

I’m the one who must bend and mold my perspective to see things in a new way…so that he may see things in a new way too.  I’m the one who must grow and stretch myself into someone I wasn’t before…so that my son may grow and stretch himself into someone he wasn’t before too.  I’m the one who must change…so that he can change the world.

So you see, he and I are perfect for each other. You could even call it ordained because God doesn’t make mistakes.

My love is his ocean – formless and flowing, always finding a way around the rocks. And he is the ship – solid and sailing, always sailing to new discoveries.

No, thank you, I don’t want you to straighten him out.

A ship that sails a straight line never discovers new land.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 at 12:01 am and is filed under Quirky Kid Dossier, This Mom Gig. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.