Boy Wonder is two years old. He's like other two-year-old boys in many ways: he delights in throwing things and getting dirty; he is quite smitten with construction vehicles and the whole idea of digging up earth in order to dump it somewhere else; and he's inherently rough and tumble with the people he loves, jumping on his parents, climbing over his sister, and tackling the little girls we count among our close friends.
I'm not so much into digging in soil I'm not planning to cultivate for dinner fodder, and I generally abstain from tackling my friends, but the longer I know this kid, the more I look up to him. I'm swiftly realizing that he's so much more the person I want to be than I have mastered myself. He has a very gentle spirit, despite the bruising physical outpourings of his affection. He is incredibly in tune with the people and world surrounding him: concerned about babies crying; alert to all the sounds, textures, and colors that I ignore as I cruise past intent on my destination, hurrying and prodding him; alert to even unexpected stillness.
He's only now starting to master language and sentences, and I can't always understand him, but he shows enormous sensitivity and understanding in the things he does say. When he catches me suddenly sitting still, he stops what he's doing and says, "Whatsa matter, Mama?" When I explain things to him (like, perhaps, "Nothing, Pea, I'm just thinking"), he counters with, "Oh, I see." Perhaps these things shouldn't surprise me, and yet he's so much more at peace and ease with the world than his older sister is, or than I am, for that matter.
Boy Wonder is afraid of a great many things for a rough-and-tumble boy, but he's also incredibly positive and easy going, and this is part of what I admire about him. He somehow manages to be sensitive and funny and stay focused on his goals all at the same time. When I tell him he can't have or do something, he'll come very close to me, so his perfect, dirty small face is nearly touching mine, give a giant grin and say, "Mama say no, I say yes!" and then repeat himself over and over, "I say yes!" No matter how many times I thrust, he tirelessly parries.
And I suddenly realize he's even more like the Buddha than I ever gave him credit for. I've always thought of him as a baby Buddha, at least in my own image of Buddha as simultaneously mischievous and disarming. He smiles with joy as he continues to state his case over and over, neither arguing nor surrendering. He is at peace with his own mind.
Don't misunderstand me, Boy Wonder has his share of wailing fits--he's two, and barely knows the difference between anger and sadness. Perhaps he experiences them the same way, or simply expresses them in the same way, but any letdown makes him positively morose and inconsolable until I take a minute to hold him and acknowledge his pain. But even in this, I see his sensitivity. A moment later, he's fine and back to construction and deconstruction. He's exuberant about life and his tempers are short-lived.
And one of the main things I revere about him: he stops to smell the roses. Literally. It drives me crazy most days because, of course, I'm always trying to get somewhere, like the dolt I am. But he is absolutely in love with the natural world, and can sit and inspect flowers, plants, and insects for seemingly endless sessions while I prompt him to move on and watch my hair turn gray. We had a very wet winter, which yielded a bumper crop of weeds in our yard that the bees went nuts over. Once I got used to their presence in the yard and realized they weren't going to hurt anyone, I watched as Boy Wonder sat a foot away from a hardy flowering weed or clump of rosemary and just quietly watched the bees go about their business.
Every morning when we take his sister to school, he stops directly outside our front door to inspect the cacti in pots while I get Spitfire and all our gear into the car, and I have to come back, pick him up, and carry him to the car, because he simply can't be torn away from the cactus. If I do manage to direct him past it, he stops, instead, to inspect the grass. Once we get to school, we pass the same flower beds every day, and invariably he must squat down and visit each and every bed, circle around to the first again, and would continue to visit his friends the flowers ("I smelling them, Mama!") the rest of the morning if I did not force his unwilling body ("No, Mama, I smelling!") toward the schoolyard so his sister won't be late for class. It's a tireless dance, this; but I appreciate him all the more for it.
If I were smart, I'd stop to appreciate beauty daily, too. I hope he'll teach me to reclaim that.
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