Staring into the future (Part 2)

(This is the second part of a post which begins here)

Back at the park…

E stood by my side at the entrance of the park, clutching the soccer ball I’d found in the sand. He was holding it with two hands, sort of like a security blanket as he watched the other kids. I was following his lead. If he wanted to leave, we could. If he wanted to walk over to one of the other groups of kids, we could do that, also.

A toddler wobbled his way over to my son. He was close to E in age, and was also holding a ball. Despite their obvious shared love of balls, their interaction was minimal.

Suddenly a bigger kid – about nine – entered the park, walked over to my son and without saying a word, snatched the ball from him! How dare he? No way I’m gonna’ let some punk bully take something from my son!

Without even thinking what I was doing, I grabbed the ball back and glared down at the kid. “He was playing with that,” I said, holding back my instinct to yell. I handed the ball back to my son, as my mind started processing how the scene looked to my son. I want to set a good example of dealing with conflict.

The kid looked up at me, and said without any trace of anything but sincerity, “But it’s my ball.”

Oh crap.

I felt about five inches high.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and took the ball back from my son (praying he wouldn’t get upset – he didn’t, thank God) and handed it to the kid. Though I’m sure my son didn’t understand what I was saying, I explained that it was the boy’s ball and we had to give it back.

The boy took his ball and ran away. I felt like a big meanie.

I began to wonder how I will handle it the day my son runs into REAL bullies? And then I began to think of my own experiences growing up.

Somewhere the innocence of childhood gives way to the pain of growing up.

Like my son, I often watch people. I watch how they interact with one another and try to figure out what makes them do the things that they do. I’ve spent years trying to figure out how we as a species can be capable of such great things yet also have such an endless capacity for evil.

I was raised to be a good child. I respected my parents and other adults, I was the first person to offer help when someone was either moving to or from our neighborhood. I was the product of a relatively strict upbringing and I’d like to think my parents raised me right, if not a bit old fashioned.

I grew up in an inner city which had turned to crap. By the time I was 10, I’d witnessed my mother getting mugged, I was nearly dragged into the bushes by a man with a knife as I was on my way home from school, and I’d been chased down by a carload of thugs for the crime of being a “honkey”. My dad decided that enough was enough and sacrificed everything to bring us to the safety of the suburbs. That safety came at a cost, though. My dad bought a house at the height of a real estate boom and for a long time, we lived on a very tight budget.

Unfortunately, I didn’t fit into my new surroundings. I was essentially a poor kid who was suddenly thrust in with the children of wealthy parents. My kindness and naiveté made me a target. I was called a “goodie two shoes” and as kids got crueler, “a faggot” simply because I was different from them. I became a target for bullies who picked on me because I tried to turn the other cheek and wouldn’t fight back. I remember many nights crying myself to sleep wondering what the hell was wrong with me.

Kids have an innate ability to sniff out the weakest of the herd.

So, I did what I had to do to survive. I hardened. I stopped trusting people. I honed a razor sharp wit. Humor was a good defense, but it didn’t always work. I eventually had to fight back. I began to hate – others for what they did to me and myself for what I’d become.

Adapting, I was able to fit in, and in time, even made friends. However, at some point, I mourned my innocence that was forever lost. I had changed, and not in ways that I wanted. It took me a while to rediscover what mattered most to me.

Only when I stopped caring what others thought, was I able to find the strength to be myself.

I don’t feel sorry for myself and the hell I went through. I imagine most kids have a tough time at some point in their lives. Had I grown up happy and fitting in, perhaps I would never have turned to writing and drawing. Maybe that hell helped shape my talents.

And now…

I do not want my son to go through the same hell. I look at him, so full of happiness, love and innocence. And I want him to stay this way forever. I don’t want him to feel the awful stings of the many arrows that life has aimed at us.

Yet, part of me knows that pain is a part of life. And you have to let your children stumble or they will never learn to pick themselves up.

So while I want to hold him and protect him forever in a big Daddy Bubble of Protection, I know I can’t. In time, I’ll have to teach him to be strong. I might even have to teach him how to fight. It pains me that any parent should have to teach their children violence.

For now, the best thing I can do is to simply keep letting him know that he is loved. Hopefully the love of parents will help protect him from life’s cruel arrows. I know it helped me.

Thank you mom and dad.

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Tagged as: fatherhood