My son Jack is perhaps one of the most wonderful, endearing, creative, frustrating, confounding, challenging children I have ever met. He is capable of such amazing joy and such total destruction. He loves full on and has a temper that could split the earth in two. He is a child of dichotomy.
Even though he is only 4 (as of this Monday), Jack has one of the biggest personalities of anyone I’ve ever met. People don’t forget meeting him. He’ll go right up to perfect strangers, stick out his little plump hand and say, “Hi! I’m Jack.” Then he goes on to describe some aspect of his life that is taking center stage at that moment, because to him life is great and we should all be sharing in its greatness. Lately it has been, “Hi! I’m Jack. I’m having a birthday party.” For several weeks this summer, it was, “Hi! I’m Jack. I got new shoes. See!” Everyone is a potential friend for Jack and he wants to meet everyone.
Jack enjoys people. He is as comfortable hanging out with college kids as he is rolling with the pre-school set. He loves the ladies and is often found holding court with a gaggle of cooing girls around him, but he is 100% boy and can keep up with kids twice is size.
Even when he is up to eyes in mischief, he is doing it joyfully. It just sort of bubbles out of him like lazy volcano. It is usually this lust of life that gets him in the most trouble, because he wants to try everything and is constantly pushing the limits of acceptable behavior. It is his daring and experimental nature that will lead him to greatness, but for now manifests itself in emptied containers of waffle mix in his bed, wheelbarrows full of mud pies in the front yard, and art projects drawn on his body. This kid is not afraid to make a mess.
There is an intensity in Jack that is really hard to harness. When he gets an idea in his head about how things should go, he puts his whole being in to bending the world to his will. He is tenacious, bull headed and willful. One could say that Jack is unwilling to compromise his principles (of course, at 4, most of his principles center on things like extending bed time, not eating his dinner and being allowed to empty the bathtub on to the bathroom floor). This intensity is his blessing and curse.
Jack’s intensity does not fire off randomly in all directions at once. He can and often does focus it. I used to dread the day that I would have to start school with Jack. I was sure that I was going to have build a chair with springs in the legs to absorb all of his extra energy. I could not have been more wrong. He is am amazing student and a very quick study. He loves school and gives it his full attention and effort. This summer he breezed through the entire pre-K curriculum and will be starting Kindergarten very soon.
As his mother, I feel like I walk a tight rope with Jack. One the one hand, I would never want to do anything to squash is effervescent personality, to suck the joy out of his being, or quell the fire that burns his engine so hot and fast. Nonetheless, I would like to go grocery shopping every once in a while without leaving the store feeling like I just stormed the beaches of Normandy as an army of one. I wish I could discover the key to redirecting his energy with out inciting his rage or sparking his temper. I would like to teach Jack to have just a smidge more patience with the rest of us who have trouble keeping up with him.
I often say, “Jack is going to be a fascinating adult. All I have to do is survive his childhood.” Being his mother is sometimes like holding a firecracker in your hand. Sure I could just let it go, but doing so is just as likely to cause a beautiful display in the sky, as it is to shoot off into someone’s house and burn it to the ground. My job is to helping him learn to shoot for the stars, because once he gets his aim right, there will be no stopping this amazing, wonderful, motivated, principled, energetic, joyful Jack.
Happy Birthday Jack!
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