Prosperity Of Soul
Earlier today my little boys heart was broken. I watched it break and I didnāt stop it. it was painful to sit across from him and offer exactly zero compensation for what he had lost, and to try feeling the weight of what he had lost, along with him.
His little sister had gone to a birthday party, itās the first birthday party sheās been invited to from childcare. she was very excited.
We explained to Reuben that he was going to miss out on that party, and we invited him to participate in a plan which might give him his own fun day instead.
It came down to Reuben wanting to buy a Toy. I was happily surprised this morning when he got his own money box out, he was fully committed to this journey.
I offered him a toy i had previously bought, getting ahead for Christmas, it was a storm trooper. I said I would pay for most of the toy, he just needed to pay a token amount.
Reuben decided no. He wanted to have the whole journey. Reuben wanted to pick from the toy isles at K-Mart. So thatās where we went.
As usual Reuben wanted the first toy he saw in the shop, then the second, after that the third was too expensive and all the while i was saying āgreat, keep that one in mind and we will come back to it if theres nothing else.ā
Reuben had decided early on. we looked around the other isles, but then it became clear to me that he was placating, so it was back to decision number four, the skateboard.
We got home and I insisted that we watch a youtube clip on skateboarding for beginners. it was informative. The skater showing us what to do was soft spoken and polite, making it very easy to watch.
Then Reuben got upset. I had insisted we take a moment to decide which foot was to be the front foot. Regular foot or goofy! He almost lost it, he hadnāt had much sleep the night before. My insisting that there was preliminary stuff to be done before Reuben could skate was upsetting him.
Reuben seemed to have an image in his mind of jumping on the board and sailing down the road and it was very nearly too much for the little guy to put up with these fussy details i was on about. But Reuben held it together.
We took some time found some scissors unwrapping the board from the plastic.
We got out all of my old knee pads, and elbow pads and wrist guards, bought for me in the early 2000ās, as a joke or encouragement of sorts.
We negotiated putting on mums helmet, because Reuben had grown out of his.
we spoke about where to place the feet and recapped what the man had said on the youtube clip.
We walked out to our empty dead end road in front of the house, the neighbours were away which gave us more space, than usual to hone our craft.
Then as i said my final words of cautionary preparation, Reuben put the board on the ground stood up, rolled an inch and fell on his butt and left elbow.
It took him another four seconds to figure out that this tragedy was all my fault, primarily because i had removed the ill fitting elbow pads and used them as his knee pads. I had thought the elbow the least likely place for Reuben to fall fatally on our first skating outing.
As Reuben was walking inside as he declared over his life that he would never try skateboarding again. Then with tears he edited, he would have another go when he turns ten, an unimaginably distant future. Better, but still not a great declaration for a six year old.
When we got inside Reuben sat on the couch opposite me. I needed to debrief what had happened with him, I needed for us to sit with this. I needed him to get back out there, or decide rationally that it really wasnāt his thing. I needed for one of these outcomes to be the next thing we did. Reuben wanted to escape the meaning of all of this.
āCan you put the T.V on.ā Reuben asked through tears. āI want to watch T.V with you buddy!ā I said ābut i need to talk with you first, because I think your heart is broken.ā
If he was crying before, he now began to sob. He took himself to his room. As he was in his room crying his heart out, I was tempted to āwait for him.ā and by that I meant, pull out my phone and scroll through Facebook until he had stopped crying. Lets be honest, that is not waiting for him at all, that is simply doing something else, nothing more noble.
I had felt resentful when Reuben had blamed me for the fall. I thought heād ignored my intentions in every action Iād taken towards his adventure. No wonder i wanted to scroll through Facebook. I wonder how many times in a day itās easier to do that than it is to actually wait on a son, or daughter, a wife or someone else.
So I did wait, instead of just doing something else. I listened to the tears, and i imagined what the tears were saying, what they needed. I weighed the tension of letting this go on and somehow bringing a resolved feeling out of this for Reuben. I thought about the last time my heart had broken like that, and I remembered when I was not much older than him, and I had wanted to play the xylophone.
Reuben came out of his room and sat in front of me. We spoke with each other and he said he wasnāt going to ride his skateboard āuntil he is ten!!!ā I said āThats fine, I Just need to hear you at the moment.ā We talked through it a little bit. I wasnāt going to try and make him get back out there, I really wasnāt, i had let go of that need.
I told Reuben that when I was in year one, my class was often given free play time. We could go and play with lego, or blocks or play the xylophone.
One day my teacher asked if someone would like to get up and play the xylophone for the class. I desperately wanted to show off my amazing prowess to the class and receive their accolades.
I put my hand up to say that i was willing to demonstrate, the teacher picked me. It was like a dream realised, I imagined the praise of my classmates and teacher as they said āthat was the most flawless rendition of Frarajaka that there has ever been.ā and āYou have our entire unfiltered admiration!!ā
I took up the xylophone mallets and struck the first note, then moments later discovered there were letters on a page in front of me. They were written in a sequence which corresponded to the different bars of the xylophone. I searched hard and frantically until i found the the second corresponding note, I struck this one as well, then began the search for the third note.
My teacher did not bother to hide her disappointment as she told me to sit back down and asked for someone who had actually practiced to get up and have an actual turn. The next person to perform did very well from what i remember.
Iām not sure what happened for Reuben, on the inside, as I told him that story. He started to smile. i hadāt tried to fix anything, nor had i offered him a compensation for his pain.
Something had been lost for him when he fell off that skateboard. Reuben was looking for his own ways to console himself. āIt was dads fault!ā, āturn the tv on for me!!ā or even āthe way life is i wont do that again, or at least until i am ten!!!ā but really for him, it was reasonably heartbreaking, and the reason for the heartbreak was inside Reuben himself, whatever that reason was.
Iām very grateful that Reuben smiled. He came over and talked about how things could have been different for me in my xylophone performance. He said that I aught to have practiced more before attempting Frarajaka.
Maybe he thought that it was funny that I was a kid once. Maybe picturing me in a school uniform was funny. It might have been that he could relate to the confidence of a six year old, thinking that every new experience could be the one where i finally realise the brilliance i had always known i was created for. It might have been that he just plain got over it.
Whatever had happened inside Reuben we padded up again, remembering the elbow pads this time. We got outside, I talked with him about the position of his feet and balance of his head. He waited for me to hold his hands. We worked out which foot aught to go to the front, (itās the regular not the goofy). we even had a couple of turns of moving the feet into riding position from the pushing position. And we went up and down the small stretch of road in front of our house.
Reuben achieved so much today, and he did it alone, and that was painful for him. I walked alongside him, I did that by myself, and that was painful for me. Theres no real compensation for that kind of pain, for that heartbreak, not really. I know that through these kinds of heartbreaks I have found meaning. Whatever the meaning was was, reuben found it in my story too, and for some magical reason that makes these heartbreaks worthwhile.
Not everybody gets back out on the board after the pain and heartache. And some people never let go of the need to get back out there, they actually canāt.
It seems to me that to the extent we find meaning in this journey we take, is the extent to which facing our trials is worth it.
We all have more fight in us than we give ourselves credit. I think often we just need someone there, someone who āknows with usā that the fight is real, that itās significant, that it hurts, and itās worth it even if you fall on your butt.
