October 20 2024
I was sitting at the table with Waits after dinner. Half eaten plates of food, legos, scraps of paper, my head resting in my hands. Waits is both perceptive and nurturing. I wasn’t hiding my emotional cards, but the softness in his tone when he senses a shift tells me, a 41 year old man, that it is safe to say what I feel.
“Dad, you’ve looked sad today.”
There is a line here, a boundary, and it can be sort of nebulous, especially when emotions are steering the boat. I want to let Waits in, to let him see a vulnerable and emotional father, one who doesn’t have it all together but can still be relied upon and trusted. I don’t want him to have to take care of me. He doesn’t need to be caring for an adult man at 9 years old. So the move is how to show him where I am and not put him in a place where he has to be a caretaker, to be something he is not and should not yet be.
“Well pal, I’ve been scared. And that’s ok. Some days I’m scared and some days I’m not, and even when I’m scared I know that the three of us are in a good place,” I told him, my arms now resting on the table. He’s looking at me, taking apart legos.
“Have you cried?” he asked me. “It always helps me when I cry.”
“You know pal, I haven’t cried. I’ve wanted to cry, but the tears won’t come,” I said.
“Do you have an invisible friend?” he asked, eyebrows raised, a brightness in his face. “I talk to mine a lot and he helps me cry sometimes. Maybe you need an invisible friend!”
“Waits you’re right. I think that’s what I need.”
He grabbed some nearby paper and one of the 38 pencils that never make it back to their home.
“I know what he should look like. And I know all the things you like.”
For 10 minutes he drew, talking through all of the elements.
“His name is Cristafre.” (He said “Christopher” and spelled it the way he spelled it which is perfect.) “He wears a stocking cap and has a walking stick. This is his portal. There’s a tree because you love trees. And there’s a lamp growing out of the tree because you love to make lamps. And there is music because we are always listening to music. Everything is made out of wood. Oh and that’s a rainbow. Just because.”
• • • • • • • •
The tears still haven’t come. I don’t know why. Maybe the feeling of being scared has temporarily closed something in me. Could be a number of things. I don’t have to figure it out. What I know is that it's good for me to feel what I feel, stay present with it, not numb myself, listen to what it might have to teach, and let others in so that I don't shrink away into aloneness and the spiral of victimhood.
And here's my boy, giving me the gift of a new friend and the gift of his vulnerability of how he opens up to another.
