So, Bumby is six. YEARS old. I went back today and read some of the posts from when he was a baby, and it’s sad and sweet and wonderful to have a record of his baby days. My baby is not a baby anymore. Now, he’s six, a boy.
I have always had this thought about Bumby, that I would have his baby days, and his boyhood would belong to my wife. I do not like “boy things.” I also do not like playing. I have things I do for fun, sure, but they are not playing the way a six year old plays. My wife, on the other hand, does like boy things. She likes sports (all of them), especially football. She likes throwing a ball. She will stand there and throw a ball for the dog for like 20 minutes, and instead of being bored at the end, she will say “You’re never bored if you have a ball!” I always respond, “You mean book. You’re never bored if you have a book.” And she kind of cocks her head at me because she did not mean book, she actually did mean ball. So, this is why I assumed I would have baby Bumby, and she would have boy Bumby. Because inevitably the world would socialize him, and he would stop wanting to do “spa day” and bake cookies with Mama, and he would start wanting to throw the GD ball with Mommy, and at this point he would like her better and would therefore no longer be mine.
Which, he does like boy things now. He does like to throw the ball, and today he went FISHING. For fish.
What is remarkable about this, though, is that he’s still mine! He asks me to play with him and I respond quite honestly, “You know I don’t like to play. You play, and when you’re ready to help me with some stuff, let me know and we can go look at the garden to see if there are tomatoes.” He wants to throw the ball and I send him out with the dog on his own because it is honestly so boring. And then, he comes back to me. Like a little moon, he’s always in my orbit. When I’m working, I hear him playing in the house, and at the end of the day, he circles around. He occasionally wanders in and says, “Mama, please print a coloring page, I’ll show you which one” while I am on a conference call and everyone says hi because he sticks his little blond head right into the frame. He hears my feet on the stairs when I go down for a snack, and says “MAMA!” and runs over to tell me about fishing or the swimming pool or the TV show he likes. When I cry, he comes right toward the pain and gives me a hug and a snuggle.
And as I am writing this, I realize that the reason this is so amazing for me is that this wise little being has given me such a gift by staying mine. The gift is acceptance. It is okay that I do not like to play, he still wants to be mine. It’s okay that I do not like the ball, and that I like to read possibly more than anyone I have ever met, and that I say “Shhh” all the time when someone tries to talk to me while I am reading because I really only like to do one thing at a time. It’s okay that I cry, and I usually don’t tell him why, because he is not afraid of this and can sit there and be present with me, which actually always helps.
I think this would be what is called unconditional love. I have heard of this thing, but until right this second, I did not really feel what it is, in my bones. It means someone does not stop being yours just because you have grown and changed and one likes balls while the other likes books. It means he stays in my orbit.
Now I know that one day he will stop being mine. This is the nature of being a parent, right? If I am still the Earth to his Moon when he’s 35, that is called failure to launch and means I did not do a good job, and probably he will have a whole host of psychological problems in this scenario. I understand this. But for now, he’s my moon. And the beautiful thing about this is that I also love him like this, even though he went out to murder a perfectly innocent fish today and throws the ball even when it is covered in dog saliva and then touches me. So he has given me unconditional love in that way, also, and in this way he will never stop being mine.