Wear It On Your Sleeve

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We packed our swim bag and my four-year-old son headed over to his best friend for a goodbye hug. I hung back watching with the other mom. Here comes the hug. Wait, now he’s pulling Nick’s head closer and… there’s…the…kiss. Toby’s friend normally tolerates these demanding displays of affection, but yesterday marked a change: He made a yuck face and wiped off the kiss. Toby looked confused by his buddy’s reaction, but I didn’t give him time to contemplate. We marched to the bathroom for showers and clean clothes. Then we left the pool.

Toby always has been an unabashedly loving boy. Since he was a baby he covered his loved ones with drooly kisses and bear hugs. Sometimes these hugs come unexpectedly at the end of a dive bomb. One minute, I’m sitting on the couch thumbing through a catalog and the next I’m covered in boy, gasping for air because he has jumped right on my diaphragm. Or spleen. But he always apologizes with a kiss.

My husband and I are happy to have a sensitive son. Toby follows his big sister around with a pink unicorn tucked under his arm. He plays “Family”—a pretend game he and his sister created with blended families of dolls and Thomas the Tank Engine trains. He wants to marry his sister and his best friend. I’ve tried to explain how, legally, this is not going to happen. “Can I just marry Nick?” He suggests as a solution. “Move to New York or Massachusetts and you’re gold,” I reassure him. Sensitive boys are hard to come by these days. I love that my son doesn’t filter his toys by the “boy” versus “girl” aisles, and I love that he expresses his happiness with a kooky dance rather than a tough guy fist-pumping motion. He’s irrepressibly Toby.

But lately Toby’s buddy Nick isn’t excited about his marriage fantasy. I see him subtly pulling away, not wanting to play the same games, resisting the goodbye kiss. This will only be the first of many heartbreaks my son will suffer. Whether he continues to crush on friends or eventually discovers girls is really irrelevant to me. My son feels with his whole body. Rejection is the most crushing punishment he can experience, no matter if the source is a little boy or a little girl. I’ve watched him fight with his big sister. When she is tired of his pestering, she pulls out the emotional arsenal and drops a big “I don’t want to play with you anymore” bomb on his unsuspecting lap. The wails that emanate from his small, shuddering body propel me into a full enveloping mom hug. I predict a lot more conciliatory mama hugs in his future. I was once like him.