Portrait of a Young Man

Tonight, after lights-out, Daniel suddenly had the urge to bolt out of bed and run downstairs to get something to show me. Admittedly, Daniel hops out of bed for all kinds of reasons after lights-out, but this was new. I encounter lots of campaigns for after-bedtime rice milk, water, or snacks, but this was something he brought home from school, that he wanted me to see. When I told him it was too late at night, and we could look at it tomorrow, he was clearly distressed. If he didn't show it to me now, I might not get a chance to see it, he said, almost on the verge of tears, such that I could tell that this was very important to him, and really wasn't just another excuse to get up. So I let him run down to get this mysterious item.

Daniel came back upstairs almost immediately, with a thin-nish orange binder in his hands. There is a not on it that reads, "Please return this book on the next school day!!" (hence Daniel's urgency) with the two exclamation points rendered as smiley faces, as only a Kindergarten teacher would think to do. The title of the "book" is "Let's Meet the Morning Class," since Daniel is in the morning kindergarten program, and it turned out that each page was dedicated to a different student in the class - kind of a make-shift year-book, only for kindergarteners, hand-crafted by the teacher, and something put together at the beginning of the year, rather than the end.

I loved Daniel's page. It features two photographs at the bottom - one of our entirely family, taken the Monday after Easter (Bright Monday) outside church, in our Sunday-ish best clothes, looking proud and upbeat and a bit giddy. The other is of Young Daniel himself, standing the sidewalk of Main Street (literally) of a nearby city, a few days before The Fourth of July, in his blue shorts and pirate T-shirt and sandals, proudly holding an American flag roughly three times his height (decor for the upcoming parade), and grinning from ear to ear.

And the profile, with the personalized information written into the proper slots, is as follows:

My name is Daniel

I have 5 people in my family.

My favorite color is light green.

My favorite animal is a dragon.

My favorite food is french fries & graham crackers.

My favorite game is chess.

Chess came as a bit of a surprise to me. The favorite foods no surprise - particularly the french fries. And the "dragon," while not at all what I expected, is just proof that Daniel is more Daniel than I could have imagined on my own.

(September 29, 2011)