Almost every afternoon after I come home my son grabs his shoes and sword and heads out the door.
Sometimes we pass each other on the driveway and he gives me that 10-year-old head bob that reminds me even though he is not a teenager yet he knows that using too many words in an acknowledgement isn't cool. Sometimes he stops at the door and tells me about his day a bit before he heads out. But eventually, once his afternoon work is attended to, he heads up to the cul-de-sac in front of our house, usually running, to face the monsters that inhabit Pokeys Creek.
I write that with a dual tinge of nostalgia and envy. In fact, I often watch him a little from our front windows. And there he is in the center of the road, holding his sword at a slight angle behind his head while sizing up the enemies before him. He'll hold that position for a few moments and then dissolve into a flurry slices, thrusts, and jabs in the air before him. He'll utter battle-like noises complete with the clanging of steel, cries of the men and creatures felled before his blade, and cheers from whatever crowd might be watching his heroic efforts. He is unabashed about it. Cars will sometimes cruise slowly around the cul-de-sac and he will dutifully step aside, into the grass, for safety but even there he is defending himself from opportunistic enemy forces that mistakenly think he is off-balance having moved from the concrete to the grass. They soon learn better as my boy parries and dodges the advancing hordes. People - real people - in the passing cars sometimes watch, sometimes smile. A few give him odd glances that seem to say "glad he's not my kid."
And I think: "Damn right he's not your kid. He's mine. And he's amazing."
I have more than a few memories of being permitted to play-act around my yard in some of the more epic adventures I could construct. Depending on my theme of the month it might be a science fiction adventure that was culminating in the last few moments of a galactic space conflict or a fairy tale quest to rid the world of the last evil creature known to man. Whatever the case, I was never taught to be self-conscious about my make-believe world. Swords, lightsabers, pirate hooks for hands... it was all fair game in my world. I remember friends coming to visit me and they enjoyed the physicality of fighting or battling but never seems really engaged in the story of what we were living out. Leave it to the future English teacher to care more about the story arch of what we played outside than the actual physical conflict. But what's my motivation here? Galactic domination?
So it is with my boy. He tells me often about his friends who have one kind of sports practice Monday, a different one Tuesday, conditioning Wednesday. And while I don't begrudge these children or their parents (both my children do gymnastics one day a week currently) I am proud of my son for not getting pressured into that world of constant go-go-go. Do more. Be involved in everything. No time to rest now. I love the fact that he spends thirty minutes to an hour spinning and jumping around the street out there engaging not just his muscles but also his imagination.
I hope, silently, that he never feels the need to suppress or conceal this creative and wonderful sense of fun and expression. Some of the neatest teenagers I teach are ones who takes risks when they write in my class and allow their sense of fun and inspiration affect their sentences and paragraphs on paper. Grow up that way, your way, I think.
Right now outside he's leaping over a horizontal tree branch in a rather heroic way. I want to ask him what the story is. Goblin stole his kingdom's treasure? His princess? His magical cloak?
Whatever the answer: I know I'll love it.
