Before
Puberty begins at ten?
I looked over at my five year old holding tightly to his drug store clippers in the middle seat of Matt’s son’s car. Luka, his girlfriend, Rowan, and I went to town to run this specific errand. We are on our annual blended family vacation for the fourth summer. The only week / extended period that Matt closes his restaurants outside of singular holidays for his staff to have a break, and can indulge in early evenings, uninterrupted family time (with the exception of phone calls and emails because owning a small business never really sleeps), and unscheduled days of play, cooking, and meals together.
Rowan separated his “stuff” from the bag, which included stain remover, and a little sewing kit Bridgette bought for a dress repair. In these few seconds when I looked over at him, I too remembered in my blood and heart and veins the excitement it is to get exactly what you want, to do the exact thing you want to do, in these moments where time is free and summer feels like a different planet. When you are little and unburdened. As life’s seasons harden us, our ability to empathize these innocent, youthful exhilarations — being the baby, selecting the vacation souvenir — sometimes gets wiped entirely from sensation. Depending on where we are in measurements of stress, grief, joy, maturity, work, our blood and heart and veins reroute and close, directing us far from magic, straight toward whatever the opposite of receiving that simple “yes” is.
He had asked for a haircut before leaving home but we ran out of opportunity, and given the option to find a barber here in town or have Matt do it in the backyard, he elected for the latter. Add a tall level of happiness too for this happening with your most preferred audience: the big kids in the family you adore and see just a few times out of the year. Rowan is perfectly normal and also perfectly odd in the ways that five year olds have the specific visions they do. Although his hair isn’t grown out at all since his last trim, he wanted it shorter, with a lightning bolt shaved into the side (as I have allowed him once to do before and because we are still in a superhero-ish era that is fading more rapidly than anyone would like).
Just like his older brothers, but with other agendas, he is relentless and passionate and focuses on nothing else until one of his plans is met with reasonable solution. It will serve them well with drive when they are older… nipping and managing and squashing their sour moods now however, somewhere in between being okay and the entitlement they mimic from their time without me every other weekend and on Wednesdays, is exhausting work. I am the “no” parent.
On this same morning I put out a wildfire of testosterone surge from Isaac, my eldest,
