A Pilgrim’s Digression

My son’s birthdays always catch me by surprise. He turned six yesterday.

It was not really a surprise, since we had been planning events for him for several weeks, if not longer. Small children who are well loved have month-long birthdays, it sometimes seems. A couple weeks ago, he spent spring break with my family in West Virginia, where my Dad bought him his first bicycle, and my Mom loaded him up with toys.

Then on Saturday, he had his birthday party, two days before his “official” birthday. When he was two years old, he had a Bob the Builder party; when he was three, he had a Thomas the Tank Engine party; when he was four, he had yet another Thomas the Tank Engine party; when he was five, he had a SpongeBob Squarepants party; and this year, for the first time, he had a non-theme party at the Creative Kiln, where he and his friends painted small clay animals.

I hope it has been a memorable birthday for him. At the very least, in future years he will have a rather oddly colored rhinoceros to remind him of the event, assuming it does not get broken at some point.

The lack of a toy or cartoon-centered theme to his birthday this year is representative of how things have changed, quite unexpectedly, right under our noses. Our baby has become a little boy.

Oh, he is still affectionate, in the way toddlers are. He loves to give his mama kisses and cuddle with her on the bed in the morning. But he has begun to want his privacy in the bathroom, and his interests have expanded beyond the cute and harmless toys and cartoon characters of pre-school.

The Thomas the Tank Engine toys remain in the toy box now, unplayed with. Instead, he has developed a sudden interest in Spiderman, his interest piqued by the advertisements for this summer’s movie and the toy displays in Wal-Mart. I have bought him a couple of the action figures and have told him the “story” of Spiderman as a bedtime story. In school one day, he drew a picture of Venom, Spiderman’s nemesis, complete with a long, red tongue…an image that must have disturbed his kindergarten teacher. Or perhaps not, since she is probably used to the often frightening and violent visions of small boys.

We hung the picture on the front door with a magnet. He even wrote the word “venom” on the paper. Using his “creative” spelling, he gave the word a Latin accent, “Vendum.”

I have not decided yet whether we will take him to the Spiderman movie this summer. I will probably see if he has any interest in the two other movies, before spending money on a film that he might not enjoy, or that might frighten him. Non-animated films are still hit or miss with him. He loves the films Nanny McPhee, and the new Charlotte’s Web and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but these films are exceptions rather than the rule.

Recently, he has been most interested in watching my Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVDs, which does my heart good. I love those classic cartoons. And of course, he still loves SpongeBob, as do I. In my opinion, SpongeBob is every bit as good as the old Looney Tunes shorts.

Just as there is a part of me pleased with his growth, there is a part of me surprised and a little saddened by these changes. Thomas the Tank Engine was such a cute and friendly face. There is hardly a little boy who can resist the attraction of those little trains, and I still recall the utter joy and pleasure Brendan took in going to Toys R Us and playing at the train table. I still remember how he held those blocky wooden trains in his small hands and moved them around the tracks, happily talking to himself and making train noises. He sometimes slept with those trains; they were his best friends for a long time. We bought them for him on eBay and gave them to him for Chirstmas, birthdays, Easter, every time we went to Toys R Us. We have probably hundreds of dollars in Thomas toys, now sitting in his toy box and the floor of his closet, unplayed with. We can’t bring ourselves to sell them. Eventually, I suppose I will box them up and put them in the attic. Maybe there will be another little boy in our family who will eventually play with them; Lynn and I were talking again this weekend about having another child.

This birthday, we bought him no toys. Instead, we bought him a soccer ball, shin guards, and socks. Lynn enrolled him in soccer a few weeks ago, and he went to his first practice last week. Though it was chilly and windy, he had a great time. Considering my own unfortunate history with childhood athletics, it did my psyche good to see that he was not going to follow in my footsteps.

He is not a shy kid. He does not mind separating from Mom and Dad and going off with a gang of kids and a coach and kicking a ball around. He smiled so much, running around that field, it almost made me cry. It sounds silly, but perhaps I have not told you that back in 1978, when I was five, I had a brief and disastrous experience with tee-ball, thanks to my father.

I was Brendan’s opposite in many ways. I was shy; I had no desire to play or rough-house with a group of boys, let alone compete in a sport. And tee-ball at that time was a competitive sport. It seems hard to believe today that there was ever a time when parents thought it was a good idea to put five years old into a competitive environment and teach them that winning was the most important thing. But in 1978, my tee-ball team played to win, and parents took winning very seriously. I remember being jeered by parents when I came to bat, and I got no sympathy from my Dad.

I was no good. That was what tee-ball taught me. In fact, I was dreadful. My parents usually had to drag me to the games, quite literally. I remember being pulled out from under my bed, where I had hidden in the hopes of not having to play. I remember that it became routine for me to vomit before a game, out of anxiety.

In addition to the horror of having to perform in front of demanding and unsupportive adults, there was a bully who stood near me in the outfield. He said cruel things to me, threatened me, and generally made the whole experience of playing a sport even more distasteful than it had to be. My Dad’s response, when I told him about the bully, was that I should try to catch him alone and give him a beating, an idea which even then seemed pretty stupid considering my size.

All in all, that experience with tee-ball was a childhood trauma, to the point of being a kind of “aversion therapy” for athletics. It is hardly a wonder that I never had the desire to try another sport.

So it was a pleasure to find that my 6 year-old progeny will apparently have a much better experience with sports. He likes soccer. He is looking forward to soccer practice this week. I can hardly contain my happiness.

So we have a little boy now, a little boy that I hope is better adjusted and more outgoing than I was at his age. I think he has the self-confidence and self-esteem that I did not have. I know that I have internalized the self-loathing and lack of confidence I was taught as a child, but I do not believe that my personality and habits as a child are worthy of emulation. I do not want Brendan to be like me, in any way whatsoever. The more different from me he becomes, so much the better for him.

Six years old. What a pleasant surprise.