Friday, 05 November 2010 03:26
Because I like to journal and write I tend to think everyone does. This translates into a paranoia that someday one of my sons will decide to write a memoir and I'll be forced to see myself through his childhood eyes. My paranoia is deep and I often find myself reading pages from that future memoir in my head. I think about how my sons might remember an encounter, a moment, a breakdown, a discussion, a blink of an eye. What will their perceptions of me be, in adulthood, looking backwards. Will they find me well-intentioned, appropriately flawed, mostly endearing? Will they recall me as distant, over-involved, absent-minded, over-committed?
Having one of my children's schoolmates over to play for the first time is just another source of paranoia. What if this child grows up to be my sons best friend? What if, as adults, they remember back to being in first grade, to their first encounter. What if the new friend grows up to be the writer and they remember their first meeting with me. Will they think I'm crazy? Will they recollect that I yelled a lot or tried too hard? And what if, in their moment of recollection they realize how infinitely screwed up I am and decide they should never have coursed down a path of friendship with my kid. What if they choose that now, tomorrow, when they first venture over to our home.
Because I have issues and tend to meditate on them, I assume everyone does. This translates (roughly) to my insanity.
Tomorrow Christian is having his best buddy from first grade over. I've met the kid a few times, his mother once. I don't know anything about him, his upbringing, his background, his likes, his rules, his allergies etc... Being slightly (or more than slightly) paranoid, I sent his mom an email. "Does he have any allergies or restrictions I should know about?" I ask like I'm going to feed him broken glass or let him parasail off our garage roof. "You crack me up," she writes back, "And no, no restrictions."
I worry that he might not be allowed to say "in the nuts" when the ball hits him while playing soccer or that he isn't supposed to play Superhero PS3 games. What if he doesn't drink sugary drinks after school or only eats healthy snacks. Sometimes I let my kids drink Koolaid and eat cookies, or packages of cookies, and I don't stress it. What if his parents do?
Because I'm paranoid I make all of this so much bigger than it needs to be. I'm sure his friend will walk home with us, play some toys, make a mess, and leave happy. Most of the kids who've made it out alive from my house do. But because I'm (appropriately?) flawed, I worry about how I am perceived by others. Sometimes I forget we are all flawed and that most six year olds don't really care about all that.
If this friend (or my son) grow up to write a non-fiction bestseller I hope their first encounter isn't story-worthy. That nothing so strange or innapropriate happens that they are forever scarred or changed by it. I hope it just is.
