Bins of Love

At bedtime I read to my son. He picks three books and we curl up together in his bed and we read and laugh. It’s one of my favorite rituals and it makes going to bed a pleasant experience. By the time we’re done with reading he’s usually calmed down, relaxed and ready to sleep. He’s also happy, he loves to be read to, he loves books.

When he feels happy like this he usually proclaims, “Mommy, this is really fun being together.” What a statement, from the heart, full of joy and his own sense of wellbeing, it fills me every time he says it.

But then one night about a month ago he said, “Mommy, I love you more than Daddy.” Ouch, that was a stab to my heart. There is a small side of me, to all of us, that loves it, we want to be the favorite parent. And in a house with both parents, this is normal and not an issue. Unfortunately, if you find yourself parenting in a two home family, this can be a sign post for problems up ahead. In the big picture, I don’t want him feeling like he needs to love one of us more, that he needs to appease us or make us feel… well anything in particular. That’s way too much responsibility for a young child.

In my dismay, in an effort to take a moment to asses things, I looked across the room and saw his chest of bins. This cute little dresser type stand that holds six different colored bins, in our case for toys, sits across the room holding all of his favorite treasures. So it struck me as a wonderful metaphor.

Rather than go with the statement of his comparative love as a compliment, which I didn’t feel, in my heart, that it was, I decided to discuss the bins. I told him that when we love someone it does not affect the way we love anyone else, that we can love as many people as we choose with as much of our heart as we wish without taking away from the way we feel about anyone else. Like his toy bins. Each bin has the capacity to be full or empty on its own, without regard to the quantity of toys in the other bins. One could be empty while the other is overflowing. That’s love, that’s the power of love, it’s infinite, or as infinite was we choose to allow it to be. I probably said it in more six year old terms, but the metaphor was well received.

I looked over to him, resting in his bed, looking up at me with the biggest blue eyes nestled within his creamy soft skin, cuddled into his blankets, sucking his fingers with his old warn blankie and he smiled. I kissed him goodnight and he said, “Mommy, this is really fun being together.”

It’s Not Rejection

Living between reality and the ideal means that I am constantly thrown up against the most counterintuitive lessons. Sometimes these are the most horrible feeling experiences and yet they turn out to be the best of all worlds. When we were young, if we grew up with security and a feeling of safety, we took our parents for granted. We tossed them aside like our old, used toys only pulling them close when they suited us. That was fine for me, when I was a kid, but now I’m the grown up, the adult, the parent. I am the one tossed aside as the painful expression of my own child’s feelings of well being. For good or ill, my son doesn’t actually toss me aside as much as he tosses his emotions, loudly, into the center of the room. He continues to throw tantrums, even at the advanced (ha ha) age of six. Generally he is a calm, happy kid, but when he’s tired, or worse even, hungry, he reverts to an over stimulated, emotionally driven three year old with ear twisting screams and cries that would make the most tolerant of parents seek a paddle (and for the record I do not spank or hit my child, ever).

Some well attached children simply reject their parents. A true sign of love. One night a week my dear friend from down the street brings her lovely daughter over for an evening play date (babysitting) so that she can get some personal projects done on her own. Last week when her lovely daughter was here the kids played, and dressed up, and ran around with the dog. They laughed and they built things, and just as we all sat down to read books our time was over. Her mother returned, her face filled with a bright smile ready for her lovely daughter’s, usual, warm embrace. But none was given. The child, beautiful with her blue eyes and happy smile turned sad and started crying, not a tantrum a cry, an honest, deeply felt sadness brought to the surface, cry. She looked at her mother and said “I don’t want to go home with you, I want to stay here.”

Let me just say, as flattered as I am that she loves coming to our home, this isn’t about me, this is about the joy of playing with someone else’s toys, this is about what it feels like for two kids without siblings in their homes to play as a brother and sister, and most of all, I believe, this is about her deepest feelings of security that she can reject her mother. She is four, too young to connect the dots of life without her mother, life in our home with different rules, different food, and a completely different rhythm of life. These are not her concern, her concern at that emotion filled moment was simply to keep playing. And, in her deepest feelings of security she could reject her mother, push her away, treating her only everyday parent as dispensable. What a treat, huh? But yes it actually is. Because this lovely daughter is telling her mother is that she, her wonderful mom, is completely ubiquitous within her life, within her own secure view of the world and thus she can push her away physically because she is always with her in her heart.

My son expresses the same message through his tantrums. For him, it’s not about my ubiquity in his life as much as my unconditional love. This is not an excuse to let the tantrums continue, we are working on getting those managed, but in the meantime, they are his ill formed articulation that he knows he can be who ever he needs to be at any moment with me, that he can show me his full range of emotions without rejection and that he’s always safe with me.

And he is.