Boys Ballet – Hand Holding Hand Wringing

M-ito told me a week ago that he can’t wait until after his ballet recital so that he never has to go to class again. “I can’t wait,” he said. It made my heart sink.

I have some idea what it has been like for him, as a boy, to do ballet, but this really brought it home to me – how much I don’t know about his world. I know he has developed ways to allow himself to do ballet in school. I know that he has two lives on Wednesday afternoon – one in school and another in the music room during ballet class. I know that he walks the gauntlet from his room to the music room successfully – one floor, fifty feet and a flight of stairs – by wearing a black fencing t-shirt with a skeleton fencer on it over his leotard. He has to pass through groups of children in after-school who look up to see what he’s doing, what he’s wearing, where he’s going. I know a couple of kids (one bully in particular in the grade above) have made comments to him about his dancing ballet, but he doesn’t talk about it anymore. When he gets into the music room, the door is closed and he dances with three older girls in a small four person class. I know he enjoys dancing – I’ve seen his face and watched him in class. He is graceful and beautiful. I’ve seen him talk about the different moves he’s learned and he’s demonstrated them at home – with great excitement. But it’s been a while since he’s done that. I also know there are things he hasn’t talked about with us – that have gotten to him too. 

The recital is a public demonstration of his dancing abilities in front of his peers. It is an opening up of his behind-closed-doors dancing self. This week he finally told Mom-ita that it’s the hand-holding in the dance choreography that’s embarassing him and that he doesn’t want to do – that he can’t do it. He’s told us he doesn’t want to do the recital a couple of times already and we’ve averted his backing out by getting a detail here and there from him about why, that we can address so he’ll take one more step towards it. Right now hand holding is too much for him in front of his peers.

I was elected to talk to his dance teacher. She was upset when I told her M-ito’s plans not to take dance classes anymore after the recital. She understood right away what I was saying and what M-ito must be going through. I asked her if she could change the choreography so M-ito didn’t have to hold hands during the dance with one of his partners. She said she’d change it and talk to him about it. 

This afternoon when I came home, M-ito, for the first time in a month, showed me the “cool” moves they were doing in the recital instead of the hand-holding piece. He was excited about it and smiled while he showed me how he ended the sequence in “fifth position.”

Today we’re four weeks away from the recital, but one step closer.

A Two-faced God

Dinner was almost over and we were sitting at our dinner table, still piled high on the far side with childhood debris (tiny plastic creatures from birthday parties and gumball machines, M-ito’s old homework assignments) and adult debris (catalogs and bills). I’d made us dinner and Mom-ita was in the bedroom resting, not feeling well.

“What does God look like?” M-ito asked me. We’ve been down this road before so I wasn’t completely surprised he’d asked me but still, it seemed out of the blue. 

“I don’t know,” I said.

“If God was a color he’d be yellow.”

“I like yellow.”

“So do I.”

“Does God have a shape?” I asked.

“He doesn’t.”

“What if God was a woman?” I asked.

“What if God had two faces? ” M-ito countered.

“You mean like a Hindu God with a man’s face on one side and woman’s on another?” I said.

M-ito nodded.

“There’d be half a man’s body on one side and half a woman’s body on the other.”

“And,” M-ito jumped in. “On one side he’d have a penis and the other she’d have a vagina and when she had to pee it would go on forever!”

“I guess it would,” I said. 

Mom-ita walked in sometime in the middle of this and sat down next to us.

“What are you two talking about?” she asked.

“God,” I said. “And he’s got two faces, on one head.”

M-ito nodded, smiling.

The Fog Mound Trilogy

Here’s a new book series M-ito and I have read that is terrific: The Fog Mound Trilogy by Susan Schade and Jon Buller. Alternate chapters are either narrative with illustrations (one on each page from big to small in size) or comics style. Each book has a different color scheme (one is blue black and white, one is green black and white, and one is purple black and white). The pen and ink artwork is beautiful. The story themes of love, friendship, helping each other, helping the environment, being careful not to tinker too much with nature, and observe the world around you, are wonderful. It was such a pleasure reading this with M-ito and not worrying about obnoxious, sarcastic, or foul mouthed characters (like there seems to be on every TV show and movie). Instead there was adventure (plenty of it) and thoughtful, interesting, real characters. M-ito loves to read and we alternated reading – he especially enjoyed reading the more visual comics chapters but the narrative chapters with a picture on each page kept him hooked. I can’t recommend these books highly enough. I’d say the age range is 6 and up because younger kids might not make it through the narrative sections and or they might be scared by some of the content.

Walk the Walk

Maybe you’ve seen this too. A parent, usually a father walking in front of his child sometimes a few feet, sometimes ten feet or more, and the child is walking behind. The man doesn’t look back to check on the child (I’ve seen it with boys and girls). The child rushes to catch up then falls behind because his legs are too short and he can’t keep up.

Yesterday I saw it twice. Once on a main street and once on a side street. On the main street it was a small boy, maybe five, who was huffing and puffing, running then walking, then running then walking, trying to catch his father. The father didn’t look down or back even once. Not even to yell, “Come on!” He just walked, crossed streets, shouldered his way through crowds, and the child tagged along behind. I guess he had things on his mind.

The second one I saw was an older girl, maybe 8, in school dress running to catch up to her father then stopping for a moment to look at flowers then running to catch up and walk beside him. He also did not look down or check on her. He was lost in his own world and seemed to have forgotten her. The look on her face was heartbreaking as she looked up at him when she was next to him, tried to get his attention, then gave up.

I walk too fast for my son sometimes but I have to turn and stop when he’s out of my peripheral vision and say, “Come on, keep up, we’re late. Gotta keep going. Hurry!” I’ve got a collection of sayings I use to try and spur him forward. Sometimes I just say, “Let’s race!” And it never ceases to amaze me how fast he can run when he wants to. But usually I try and tell myself to slow down. Even if he’s walking one step away from slow motion. Stay at his pace, I tell myself. It’ll be better for both of us – even if I’m late to a meeting or appointment. Even if I’m late. I never let him out of my sight, I mean never. Okay, maybe four or five times in my life with M-ito I have lost track of him either at the park or once in Disney Land (I hate those crowds). At the park kids or parents blocked my view and I had to rush over to find M-ito because he moved over ten feet in those few moments to play with some other kids. Four or five times and each one practically gave me a heart attack. Walking ahead of my son and not even looking at him? Not knowing where he is? I can see being so angry at him that I’d want to do that – say, “If you don’t hurry up I’m going to leave you  here.” Then try to walk ten steps to see if he follows. But I could never go any further. I don’t want to. The whole time I’d ask myself, “What are you doing? This is s-t-o-o-p-i-d.” I’d just be doing it as another attempt to get him to move – a little, perhaps faster, perhaps just out the door. Oh the games we play with our children.

But, to walk and not look back. To not even seem to care?

Youtube Trouble – Parental Controls to the Rescue

It’s time for me to put parental controls on the computer. M-ito has figured out how to use Google.

Yesterday he called me over to see something he’d found on the computer. It was a Star Wars Lego video on Youtube. I watched two of them before I shook myself and realized my son had found Youtube. How did he find Youtube?

“How’d you find Youtube?” I asked, speaking almost as quickly as I thought.

“Right here,” he said and showed me how he’d typed in Legos and gotten a list of sites, including Youtube videos of legos Star Wars characters in stop-motion battle with each other. It was just dawning on me what this meant – what my son had found and what he could now be exposed to when he showed me another video.

“Look at this one, Dad-dito!” he said, pointing to the screen.

I saw what looked like a scene from episode 1 on the planet Naboo – marshy with fog and a gungan riding a walking two-legged creature. I looked up at the title of the film – Star Wars Spoof Battle with Benny Hill. “Whow,” I said, taking the mouse, ” time to switch channels.”

“Why?” M-ito asked.

“This one’s adult content – you know – not for kids.”

M-ito just looked at me.

“From now on you have to have Mom-ita or me nearby when you go searching on Google or watching Youtube. Got it?”

He nodded.

Later I watched the film, of course, because I’m an adult and I’m curious. It was the battle scene from the movie sped up to manic speed while the famous Benny Hill Show music played in the background. I smiled through to the end.

Satya – Truthfullness

“Dad-dito, can we play Pokemon now?”

“No, honey. It’s time to go to bed.” 

M-ito’s face fell and he started to cry. Dishes from dinner were still sitting on the table behind us. Our bellies were full and it was almost 7:30pm, bed-time. “I’m sorry but it’s time to go to bed.” I put my hand on his shoulder.

“You lied to me. You always lie to me,” M-ito said, shrugging my hand away and dropping himself onto the sofa.

“What do you mean? I didn’t lie to you.”

“You did to. You always tell me we can play a game together and then there’s never time to play. You always do that. You always lie to me.”

The words always, never, and lie flared up in my brain in neon.  Before I replied I took a breath and thought about what my son had told me. I knew he was upset because we had only had time for homework and dinner, no playing, and my son lives for play – as any child his age should. So his outburst wasn’t unexpected. Still, I paused because I’d been teaching in my yoga classes the concept of Satya, or truthfullness, and my son saying I had lied, was just too coincidental. I thought about what I’d told him before dinner when he’d finished his homework and I’d said to get ready for dinner. “We can play after dinner,” I’d said. Well, it was after dinner and we weren’t playing. As usual dinner and dessert had taken too long – or longer than I’d thought it would , and there was no time left. But I had said we’d play.

Had I done this before? Yes, actually I had. I did it alot. I told my son, “Yes, there’ll be time later,” when I was pretty sure, if I was being honest with myself, that I knew there wouldn’t be. I wanted there to be time. I wanted us to play. I felt guilty about all the time I spent working and teaching and not being able to pay attention to him, so I said, yes, we’d have time. I ignored the little voice in my head that said, no way. I didn’t want to see his face fall. Instead I saw it fall after dinner anyway, when I had to say what I should have said in the first place.

So I looked at M-ito and apoligized. “You’re right,” I said. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told you that. I wanted us to have time so I said we would. I shouldn’t do that. It’s not telling you the truth. If I’m not sure we’ll have time to play, from now on I’ll tell you that. I’ll tell you the truth. But it means I’ll be telling you there won’t be time to play even when you want there to be time to play. You understand?”

M-ito nodded. He wiped the tears from his eyes.

“You ready for bed?”

He nodded again, the argument washed out of him. I gave him a hug and he didn’t resist.

I took a deep breath and exhaled, letting it wash out of me too.