Foot Locker's Surprisingly Heartwarming Fashion Model

Amy and Daniel came by my work just before 5:00 today.  Amy needed to drop Daniel off with me, and have me pick up Ian and Madeleine from Russian Math class and take everyone home while she was to meet with  a client.  I figured that Daniel would probably like to come up and see the office.  He's been there before, but it has been a few years since the last time.  (Ian, similarly, mentioned to me a year or two ago something like, "Don't you think it's time for us to come up to your office again?")  I proposed coming down to Amy's car and bringing Daniel upstairs with me for a couple of minutes, and Amy said that that was exactly what Daniel had been hoping for.

We had a nice little visit to the office.  We said hi to Raj, the (Nepalese) security guard at the front desk, and Daniel met a colleague of mine.  He was interested in seeing the kitchen, and he got to look at his own artwork, as well as Madeleine's at my desk  (unsurprisingly, he could reliably tell me who made which items.) 

But there was one detail to our office visit that I hadn't quite expected: for much of the time, crossing the parking lot and walking around, Daniel held my hand.  It seemed less to be about insecurity and more to do with affection.  Nobody at work has ever seen me hold anyone's hand before, for whatever reason, and people seemed genuinely touched and tickled to see me walking about the premises holding the hand of a nine year old who was drssed in athletic shorts and a shirt, looking like he had just stepped off the soccer field.

This reflects a recurrent phenomenon with Daniel - something that should come as a surprise by now, but still it really does take me somewhat by surprise each time it happens:  Daniel, for all his tough-guy, James Dean schtick, really is wonderfully affectionate and truly childlike, and seems okay with letting those less-than-Joe-Cool characteristics come to the surface quite often enough. 

When Western Easter had come and gone (but the Orthodox Paschal season had just started), I discovered to my great Scottish satisfaction that at a nearby pharmacy - "pharmacy" now effectively meaning "all-purpose emporium," in our world:  "All Non-Edible Easter Items" were posted at being sold at a 90% discount.  This meant, for me, that it was time to sweep up the two or three reaming Beatrix-Potter-worthy stuffed Peter Cottontail rabbits at a shocking 79 cents per bunny, for whatever deserving youth might wish for them.  I assumed Madeleine would want one, and gave it to her the next time I was alone with her.  I thought that Daniel probably wouldn't want one, but when I was alone with him in the car (seclusion being the preferred context for giving any individual child their own present), I asked him if he would like one.  To my slight surprise, he immediately said yes, so I gave him a Peter Cottontail, and he kept it in my car for some time afterwards, like the kind's scepter awaiting him at his throne during any time of absence.

In the car yesterday, he was telling me about one boy in his class who is somewhat likeable but likes to tease.  He told me that this lad took  off with Daniel's stuffed rabbit, forcing Daniel to come and  reclaim it with a modium of seriousness to the pursuit.  I was a bit surprised to hear that Peter Cottontail had gone anywhere near school with our very unsubtly cool-aspiring lad - something of an anomaly in our house.  But tonight, when I was looking through Daniel's school backpack, there was Peter, lying at the bottom of the main compartment like some faithful companion who, however unassuminly, makes a point of always being nearby when you're setting off on your daily routine. 

Our middle offspring, the explicitly cool-and-happening one, turns out not just to be a kid, but in fact a child, and a poignantly vulnerable one, with a tenderness that repeatedly defies his Under Armour veneer.

(April/May, 2015)