I Saw Just a Flicker of Sadness.
Now that it is summer, Dylan stays up very late. We’ve taken away his bedtime rule, allowing him to stay up as long as he likes. Bill and I often go to bed before Dylan now.
Shane, meanwhile, goes to bed at 9:00. If it’s a late evening for some reason, he doesn’t go to bed until 10:00. It doesn’t matter, though, because Shane wakes up at about 7:00 every, single day. Then he sits there, alone, reading, practicing magic tricks, and listening to Adventures in Odyssey – sometimes for two hours, before considering breakfast.
Shane adores this alone time.
But sometimes, I think, he doesn’t.
Yesterday, we were planning to take Shane along to do something that Dylan had to do. Shane’s job would have been to sit, for two hours, and wait.
“Do we have anything else to do tomorrow?” Shane asked.
“Well, Dylan has church,” I told him. Dylan’s youth group meets on Wednesday nights – and this week, they are watching a movie.
“Can I go?” Shane asked.
“Sorry,” I said, “it’s only for middle school kids. So, are you going to be okay sitting there for two hours tomorrow afternoon? You can bring a book or something.”
Shane nodded, not in a despairing way. But I caught a glimpse of something I hadn’t noticed before. He nodded … with some anxiety that I might notice his disappointment.
Shane didn’t want me to be angry that he didn’t want to sit there for two hours. So he gulped and nodded and I saw just a flicker of sadness.
When you’re a mom, you can see these things, clear as day, right in your child’s eyes.
I always wondered how my mom knew things that she couldn’t possibly have known – when I ate a cookie, for example, if she wasn’t even in the house when I did it. But she knew.
And now it’s so obvious. I just know.
So I picked up the phone and called my dad, who is the greatest grandfather in the whole world.
“Shane doesn’t have anybody to play with tomorrow,” I said.
“Well, I don’t have anyone to play with tomorrow either,” he said.
So Shane gets some time with Grandad now, instead of spending two hours just sitting there, waiting for Dylan.
And this evening, when Dylan is at church, watching a movie with his youth group, I plan on watching a movie, too, with Shane.
Sometimes I have to see past the acquiescence, and give him something really special: time.