My youngest son, Caleb, gets very upset when he falls down or gets hurt. At three, most kids sit on the floor and cry until Mommy comes. Here’s how that scene plays for Caleb. First, he pauses to see if he’s really hurt. If not, he moves on. If he is, he either grits his teeth or runs out of the room screaming. If someone asks him, “Caleb, are you ok?” he runs out of the room screaming. It’s like he’s embarrassed for hurting himself, or ashamed or something. I’m not sure where this came from, but I will say that he is one tough kid! The one time he really cried was at two when he climbed up on the table and fell into the metal brads on the corner of the couch. That was a doozie. He cried as he bled all over the living room. This picture is from our recent holiday to the Smoky Mountains. The scuff on his cheek is from falling in the parking lot while his brothers were swinging him. The scar over his right eye is from the fall in the living room.
Yesterday, Caleb was at the park playing with his big brother Joshua, the one in the picture, and some other kids. A bigger boy began pushing Caleb in a swing. His mom was walking around the perimeter of the park with a friend. She could see him playing, and could see the boy was pushing him, and thought to herself that he was pushing Caleb a little too hard. She decided to tell him to get down when they got back around to the swing. Maybe the boy thought Caleb was older or stronger than he was because of his size (he’s rather big for a three year old). Whatever the case, Caleb lost his hold and went flying through the air. Now, what goes up must come down, and with Caleb that means a thud, a pause, and then that embarrassed scream.
But he didn’t scream this time. Jill wasn’t sure what happened at the time, because she looked up and saw Caleb whimpering and walking toward her. It was pretty easy to figure out when he got to her that he had fallen. She consoled him, and they went back to playing. But all day, Caleb was in his mother’s words, “edgy”.
When I got home, I said hi to him. He screamed and stomped his feet. He does this sometimes, but it’s usually for some immediate reason. I asked if I could hug him. He screamed and stomped his feet and ran out of the room. I backed off and tried again later. Usually I just try again later. He’s a very warm and friendly boy, but sometimes he’s slow to warm. Anyway, this happened several times. Later, Jill gave him a bowl of Pringles that he was walking around eating. I asked him for one. He screamed, ran into the next room, and stood with his back to me. (I asked him for one fully expecting him to say, no, which is ok. Because after he said no, I was going to share another one with him from the can, which I had. I like doing that kind of thing.) Anyway, his no was over the top. Jill, who knows Caleb very well, even wondered at this behavior. She said it was almost like Caleb is afraid of me or something. She asked me if something happened between us. I told her no.
Now, here’s one more thing about Caleb. He’s a boy. I say that to mean not that he has a penis, but that he’s a boy at heart. At night when he gets tired, he wants his juice, and he wants to lay next to his mother, rubbing her neck. He used to say, “want juice, want mommy neck” as he moved toward sleep. He’s not interested in daddy neck at all. In fact, if I lay down beside Caleb and his mom, he will often kick me out of the way. Oedipal? But one day I was spinning a top on the floor with Joshua. Caleb’s eyes filled with wonder. He came over to me, sat in my lap, and before you know it, he was touching my neck. Ever since then I have noticed that when it comes to kicking balls or throwing Frisbees or wrestling or playing catch or whatever, Caleb wants to be very close to me. There’s a real connection there with motion and strength and skill and performance.
I finally pulled Caleb back to me and forced him to look at me and tell me yes or no, through wails, to the question of the Pringle. I literally turned his face towards mine with a hand on either side of his head. Not until his mom finally came and held him in her lap to reassure him that he wasn’t in trouble did he answer. And the answer was no. I could not have a Pringle. “Well”, I asked him, “do you want one of my Pringles?” He kept crying, but you could see the wheels spinning. I asked again, and he shook his head ever so slightly yes. “Alright,” I said, and gave him one. He took it in his little fingers and stacked it snugly with his others. He was still whimpering, but he had stopped wailing. I asked him if he wanted another one. He shook his head yes again. So he got another one. And then he wiped his eyes and was quiet. Then he sat at the table in his mom’s lap, eating his stack of Pringles quietly.
So, with Caleb sitting in her lap eating Pringles, Jill starts talking about how edgy he’s been all day, and she tells me about him falling from the swing and the other events of his day. I asked Caleb about falling from the swing. He just stared at me. I asked him if the big boy pushed him too fast. I raised my arms in fists to communicate strength. He just stared at me flatly, maybe with a dazy-glazy look, hard to tell. I asked again several different ways. I kept bringing it back to the swing because I had a hunch that the fall, seemingly minor, was behind all this. Jill took my lead and asked him very tenderly if he fell from the swing when the big boy pushed him too high. And there it was. Caleb finally spoke, and when he did, this articulate little fellow, mouth full of Pringle glob, produced a jumbled mess of a sentence with swing and park and shopping and mommy and car and chips. Poor little guy. I don’t think he knew what to do with that fall. And because he didn’t know what to do with it, he didn’t know what to do with me or anyone else in his little world.
I went over to where Caleb was sitting in his mom’s lap and kneeled down so my head was on the level with his. I told him I was sorry he fell from the swing, and that it was ok, and that the big boy pushed him too high, and that I loved him. And then I kissed him on the cheek. He has such soft, chubby cheeks. I have such a prickly face.
Caleb went to bed in good spirits, and today he is back to his normal fun-loving self. He hugs and smiles and talks and makes a mess of the house.
I wondered last night, and woke up still wondering this morning, at how wounds work to shape our lives. Much is made of the father wound—whether it be violent physical abuse or shaming verbal constructs, or whether it’s a different sort of violence—abandonment, rejection, withdrawal, silence, passivity. But not all the hits we take are from our father or even from someone in our family. Some wounds come from thoughtless boys on playgrounds, and sometimes they come from actions that seem to carry no malice at all. Sometimes things just happen to us that hurt us, and we don’t know how to process them. I wonder how much bad behavior comes from this. Sometimes things happen to us that we don’t even know are hurtful immediately, like a meaningless kiss from a thoughtless boy or the first vision of a naked woman on a magazine page or a dirty joke. We enter that stunned stage where we are trying to figure out what just happened to us, and then maybe we move on. But then later, maybe we scream and stomp our feet, or get snippy and sarcastic with those we love. Maybe we lose it over something that would seem quite trivial. Maybe we slide into the other room and hide from the world.
Caleb needed to hear from his Daddy. And it was no use changing the subject. The subject was the fall. The issue was his heart. The cure was the words he desperately needed to hear.
It happened.
It hurt.
It’s not your fault.
I love you.
