The airplane’s roar caught the attention of both my son and I. We craned our necks, watching the gray machine streak across the royal blue sky.
“Why airplanes in the sky, Mama?”
“Well, so they can go fast, I guess,” I responded. My voice tight. My hands laden with grocery bags and a squirming one-year-old.
“Cars go fast too?” J, nearly three, asks me.
He’s still staring at the now empty sky.
“Yes.” I’m short. Trying to herd him inside.
He glances at me. And then, understanding my body language lowers his head and walks toward the front door.
“Why everything go so fast?” he asks, while stepping over the threshold into our house.
“It not so good,” he finishes firmly.
Then he shakes his head.
And once again, as he has countless times since his birth, my son rearranged my priorities.
* * *
Even as an infant, my son was old.
He rarely cried and rarely smiled. He was balanced and stable.
He walked early, but waited to truly speak until his words were clear.
By age two, he shocked me with his insight.
Like the time, when I asked him if he was excited about turning three. And he solemnly stared at me and shook his head no.
“Why not,” I asked.
“Being two is perfect,” he said. “Perfect for me.”
Or the hundreds of times when he’s asked if something could be recycled or reused, and upon hearing that it was simply just trash, he sadly muttered, “shoot. That bad for the earth.”
Or when, while I watched aghast as a group of older boys began to fight at a neighborhood park, my terribly shy boy stood up and shouted loudly that it wasn’t nice to hit.
He often hands me, or his Dad, or his little sister, the last chocolate chip cookie — unflinchingly — knowing at two years old that good things are always better if shared.
He calls big things “humongous” and tiny things “infinitesimal.”
His patience, at three, sometimes exceeds my own.
* * *
Until recently, I worried more about my son’s tenderness than I embraced it.
Sometimes I would ask my husband, “what are we going to do about Jonah?”
What will we do about school?
How will we help him socially, where he struggles?
Can he continue to carry the world on his shoulders?
But I learned — or should I say, he has taught me — to just stop.
Stop pushing. Stop worrying. Stop moving so fast.
All children have things that make them exceptional. They all have something to teach, if we just allow ourselves to listen.
In my case, my son’s kind, patience and open nature has served as a stunning example to me — a die-hard, always rushing, plan-ahead, type-A personality.
So I don’t need to DO anything.
There’s nothing to do with a child like this, except to learn from him.
