The Ways of the Belligerent Cuddler

I can't really stop commenting on this, because it keeps hitting me again and again, even though I'm technically not discovering anything new...  But the fact is, I'm surprised over and over again at the wonderful discrepancy between the "words" of Daniel's tough-guy image and the "picture" of his deep affection, which comes out in many subtle but powerful ways.

Tonight, Daniel and Madeleine were in their standard vicious circle of conflict (and I do mean vicious).  Daniel got a hefty time-out, and he seemed to be constantly either plotting to make Madeleine miserable or otherwise pursuing some fringe agenda.  Our evening began when, as I met Amy outside the music school to switch cars and human cargo so that she could take her voice lesson, Daniel jumped out of the mini-van- in spite of the pouring rain - to begin his campaign for me to take him to Best Buy to purchase the video game "Lego Pirates of the Caribbean."  This was bad for many reasons.  Amy, who doesn't hate video games for children the way that I do, "owed" him just enough money for him to get this game, and apparently she told him that maybe he could ask Daddy to take him to buy it - as doomed as that proposition was from the outset...

It was not the time to go to Best Buy.  It was pouring, Madeleine was asleep, I had all three kids with me, and Best Buy is at the mall, which means that any number of new agendas could come out of the woodwork, across all three interested parties, once we got to the hateful emporium itself.  I had a hard time imagining myself not coming out of the mall ten to thirty dollars poorer, just from taking the full entourage.  There was no way I was going to haul a sleeping six-year-old girl through the cold rain and into a vast showroom of gadgets and 20-something sales-guys in blue short-sleeved shirts.

But Daniel took it well.  He whined/cried/fake-cried/moaned/repeated his request-mantra for the whole trip home, heading into a crescendo as we got closer to the house.  Meanwhile, Ian took up the cause with a classic mixture of selflessness and selffulness; he reiterated Daniel's request a few times, with sincerity and apparent empathy for the lad.  But then, in case we really couldn't go to Best Buy, at the very least, maybe we could go to Dollar Tree...  Needless to say, Dollar Tree has something for everyone - especially Ian - or more correctly, some many things for each person, all for a dollar apiece.

But it was not Daniel's night.  The can-we-buy-my-video-game campaign continued in the house, but to no avail.  We didn't fulfill this urgent imperative, even though he has completed all the levels of his existing video games and he's getting bored with them (as he virtually made my case for me...).  I did humor him and watch a silly English you tube video about Mine Craft, and we also watched Gravity Falls and Dog With A Blog.  At one point, he got up from the couch and said, in his classic soft-whine-through-his-teeth, "Daddy, I thought tonight I'd be playing Lego Pirates of the Caribbean!" trailing off into a whimpering, foot-dragging, ceremonial Walk of Disgust out of the family room.  Then came the Madeleine Wars.  Utter strife, much intensified when the singing matriarch arrived at home and provided her own peacekeeping intervention.

But then - and this is the unofficial-but-real Daniel - the boy who needs his father for something more than pixel acquisition suddenly materialized.  He said, "Daddy, can we go to bed?!" and led me up to his room.  We said evening prayers with Ian in Ian's room - to the chagrin of our host, which I studiously ignored - and I put him in his bed and lay down next to him in the little trundle bed which pulls out from his own bed, about six inches off the ground.  But Daniel had more things to talk about - a Spy Kids movie for the most part - and kept me entertained, just as I was getting that delightful tingling numbness that kicks in before you finally nod off to sleep.  I wasn't too eager to hear about how Spy Kids ends, at that moment, but I participated in the conversation, since he wanted so much for me to hear about it.

Then he suddenly moved into the trundle bed itself - hardly big enough to hold me by myself, and squeezed himself in, head-lined-up-next-to-feet along my side, and quickly went to sleep.

This reminds me of Daniel at Camp a few weeks ago.  Since it was an Orthodox camp, they had a short reading of morning prayers in the dining hall right after breakfast, and I would step out of the kitchen, where I was working, and stand near the boys, during those prayers.  And sometimes I'd have unexpected company:  Daniel would come and either stand next to me, or stand right in front of me, more or less nesting himself against me during the prayers.  And he would either grab my hand and just hold onto it, or sometimes even take my arm and drape it around him, almost like a special workshop where clueless parents are taught what kinds of hugging and holding their children want from them.

We think of children as the nurtured ones, but often both the affection and even the education in how to relate, run in the other direction.  And thank God for that!

(July-August, 2014)