I have read enough John Irving novels to know it is impossible to construct a figurative protective dome around one’s family.
As our sons, Evan, 5, and Sean, 3, experience more of the world and its many wonders, I struggle with the balance between letting them explore and stumble or being a “helicopter parent,” hovering, removing obstacles and trying to stay one step ahead with an endless roll of Bubble Wrap, which hides the world even as it softens it.
Evan is rounding the corner toward the end of kindergarten, and it has been thrilling to watch his exponential growth. Hearing him count to 100 and watching him read his way through beginner’s books, sounding out unfamiliar words until they click, are among my life’s great joys.
I did not grow up in a particularly warm or loving household, which was great training for being a journalist. But I had some tremendous role models in friends’ families, and married a woman from a large, close and loving family, so I understand the importance of expressing love to family and friends.
If Evan and Sean know nothing else about life, they know they are loved. Their mom and I tell them openly and freely, not from habit, but from overwhelmed hearts filled with gratitude for their health and very existence. The boys hear “I love you” from their parents, their grandparents, their many aunts and uncles, their extended family and the groups of friends in our lives.
We are teaching them that, in addition to all the love they are blessed to have in their lives, there is an even greater love promised to them through their creator and heavenly host. The Cleavers, Waltons, Huxtables, Barones, Hecks and Dunphys got nothin’ on us.
But outside the protective parameters of home and family, Evan is learning some tough lessons about love and expression. He recently told a friend on the bus “I love you,” and the friend reacted by calling him weird and pushing him away. This hurt Evan’s feelings and led to a dinner table discussion about what love means to different people and the reality that not everyone shares their feelings the same way, or is open to having other’s feelings shared with them.
It broke my heart to have to add conditions to Evan’s idea of unconditional love. How sad for the world that by 5 years old, some kids are already growing cynical and adverse to expressing or receiving love in its most innocent form.
A week after the bus incident, Evan demonstrated some remarkable resilience. He was assigned to fill in a poster about himself for his special week at school, and in the lines for “What makes you special?” he wrote, in his nascent yet confident block letters, “I love everybody in the world.”
Sean, who does everything he can to keep up with his big brother, said, “Me, too!” I know that won’t always be true. But it is for now, and I bless their little hearts for not yet wavering under the peer pressure that may one day pierce their loving outlook, but for now is being kept at bay.
You’ll read this someday, Evan and Sean, long after I am passed to dust, but even then, I want you to know that you were right to love, you are right to love, and that even now, separated as we are, I love you.
Bonus Evan story
Raising two sons, I am particularly sensitive to language and the power of words, and struggle with my vulgar tendencies.
In the first of what will undoubtedly be a long line of parental hypocrisies, I am working to keep them from employing words they may occasionally hear from me (especially in traffic). Recently, winding through a line at Westgate’s Costco, Evan was seated in the shopping cart, happily stuffed with free food samples (he is fascinated by the myriad samples offered at Costco; it could be a piece of bagel, fruit, something freshly cooked or plastic wrap from the floor, and he’s captivated by the offering).
He politely asked for a clerk’s attention and said, “Would you like to hear a funny noise?” “It had better be a polite noise,” I admonished.
The clerk agreed and Evan blew a benign raspberry on the back of his hand.
“That could have been worse,” I thought to myself.
“That was funny,” the clerk indulged, smiling at Evan’s halo of innocence.
“Yes, it sounded like a fart!” Evan said, smiling ear to ear, halo shattered as if by one of his beloved Angry Birds.
“Evan!” I chided. “That’s potty talk. Apologize.”
The clerk, who was understandably cracking up but trying not to encourage the boy, motioned that it was OK, but I was trying to look stern.
Evan apologized and looked contrite, but I still felt compelled to emphasize the rudeness of his mistake, so I played the nuclear option: “Son, you know how Nana would react if she heard you talking that way.”
That got his attention and drained the humor from the situation.
As we pushed the cart toward the door, I kept the “daddy eyes” trained on him to show I meant business about the potty talk, taking my eyes off the large container of apples in the cart, which split and tumbled, apples rolling away as if fleeing from their gastronomical fate.
“Damn it!” I said.
“Daddy,” Evan said, smiling. “Am I going to have to talk to Nana?”
I gave him an apple, leaned in close and blew a raspberry at him.
