The Willem

There are days as a parent when your heart swells.  They show you attitude.  They misbehave.  They make you want to pull your hair out.  Then they give you a glimpse into their soul and you want to hug them and never let them go.

A few conversations with my oldest today:

"Mom, I may not live as long as you."

"What makes you say that, honey?"

"Because a terrible disease may take over my body and kill me."

Insert mommy fumbling around about how very healthy he is and how unlikely it is that he will die young, while trying not to cry because he's got a pretty good handle on the truth.

*****

Willem carved a pumpkin all by himself at school on Friday.  I was there and cleaned it for him, but he designed and carved it all on his own.  He was very proud of it.  It was looking pretty sickly today and had a rotting spot in the back.  So, I decided it was time to go.  I'm going to freeze the other pumpkin, but this one didn't look worthy of consumption.

"Say good-bye to your jack-o-lantern, Willem."

"Bye jack-o-lantern.  I hope you have a good time in the landfill."

Silence for a couple seconds...

"Mom," said the boy wearing his Halloween mask, "even though my eyes are tearing up, I'm not going to cry."

And then we talked about his jack-o-lantern and what a great job he'd done carving it while he fought back his tears.

"Mom, even though I'm not going to let myself cry, I'll still let the tears fall."

*****

"Mom.  What do you think the chances would be of me being home schooled for the first two weeks of November?"  (His Highlights magazine this month had a feature on Homeschooling and he spent Wednesday, a day off school, following a Homeschooling schedule that he'd made for himself).

"Well, Willem, it doesn't work that way.  You're either all home schooled or not at all."  (Adding to myself:  You're chances are slim to none kid).  "Why do you want to be home schooled?"

"Because my teachers yell at me when I'm not paying attention."

We talk about who is yelling and whether they're yelling or reminding.

"They're reminding me loudly." he says.

"Why aren't you paying attention, Will?"

"Because everything they're teaching in school is boring and I'm impatient waiting for them to teach me something harder."  Then he adds, "I'm not a lot impatient, just this much."  He gestures with his hands first far apart and then really close together.

And I have nothing to say to that.

*****

I have a child that wants to learn, and it seems that they're not really eager to let him.  But I've made a mental note to this story to the school as soon as they'll give us our IEP meeting, which was supposed to be in October.  I'll spare you my rant, but I'm pretty sure this is just the beginning of his discontent for this year.  What must it be like to be 7 and just want learn about cells and atoms and interesting things like that and have to sit through grade 2 all day?