it is a very difficult thing for me, this push and pull thing that is being a father. it breaks my heart, it breaks me apart. makes me crazy.

this afternoon, i came home from work. my wife was home, and had been working with my son on a shapes exercise. let me contextualize some of our situation with our son. lately, we have been hearing from "spectators" left and right about what we "should" do about some of his problems (as if we didn't know, as if we haven't tried). much of the "advice" had to do with "being consistent", "being stern", etc. again, as if we (or i) hadn't already tried... i had just resolved a few weeks ago to be a more loving and accepting parent (something which i still am, deep inside i know my son to be a miraculous and uniquely compassionate person), but i guess the combination of the "buzzards" around me and today's particular situation and exhaustion, whatever, it caused me to snap...

so for this exercise, my son had to sort shapes. and when i asked him what a particular basic shape was, he couldn't tell me the name of it. now, this isn't some obscure shape; it's one of the basic everyday shapes that pretty much any preschooler knows. i suppose that really shocked me. it just floored me. i had to walk away in disbelief.

"they" say that all it takes is working with a child, spending time with a child, to "get up to speed." let me tell you, i spend every free moment i can with my children, trying to help them. and still, after all the incremental improvements, after all the positive encouragement, etc., there are these moments where - well, where you feel the ground simply fall away under you...

i suppose i went on kind of berserk. i worked with my son on his shapes assignment, and then on his reading response assignment, with a kind of zeal... the shock i guess had forced the chorus of "spectators" around me to suddenly have a voice, an intense and insistent voice... maybe they were right, maybe all the "appreciation" and encouragement that i had sought to cultivate was wrong, maybe all i needed was to push him harder and harder... after all, i mean, come on, he didn't know what that shape was?!?

i worked with him for a long time. he was supposed to attend soccer this afternoon (a sport with its own host of problems for him), but i told him he had to finish his homework. in a dim corner of my mind, i could feel that this whole thing amounted to some kind of torture, me holding him to task, being relentless about keeping him up to some sort of "standard" of normalcy that the crowd had put into my head... things shouldn't be this way, and by god, i will force him to be where he should be... that sort of ridiculous notion.

let's just say that by the end, he was exhausted, and i was exhausted. i had shouted so much that the nosy persnickety neighbor next door was standing in her yard listening (perhaps debating on calling on a domestic abuse incident). it was embarrassing on some level, but to be honest, a part of me didn't care. "they" (the spectators, the crowd) weren't here, they didn't have to live with the burden of this problem, "they" only always have their stinking opinions and advice. OF COURSE my child has something going on... they never listen to all the good that he is, or the possibility that the way he is has little to do with how hard he tries...

and because i was weak, i didn't listen to this either. i pushed. i pushed hard.

and now it is 3 am and i can't stop thinking about how i took the low road, and tried to force my son to change. i wander into his room and out, i watch him sleeping with buzz lightyear and his protective silly bands around his wrist, and i think about what a monster i have become, i think about how i may be damaging this precious, caring, sensitive young soul.

and i hate the world for its opinions, its "well-intentioned" advice.

i am here with my son. every day is a lesson in catch and release. it's a gentle game, and the object is and isn't to get him to be better. the game is the game. i want to be with my son in a place where i can hear him laugh in his voice, i can hear his happiness, and not the happiness i have imposed upon him for being a monkey jumping through a hoop. love is holding hands, leading, and letting go. it's always a changing, shifting dance. i am his father, and in my heart of hearts, i know this. it's just- i wish the world would stop telling me i don't know what i am doing, that i don't know my son, or what's best for him.

i know him. i know him. please let me just play with him this game.

***

we appreciate a soul when we eulogize it. i try to eulogize my son every day. because every day the boy i knew may have died, and i will be seeing something new take its place. i will record in my heart everything i know about my son, in the time that i have. i want his laughter to be burned into me, i want the joy of sharing it to have a chamber in my heart, where it can live forever. no one will be able to take it away from me. definitely not the "spectators," who think they know better.

the relationship between a father and son, it is inviolable. it is the closest thing to a sacred thing that there is...