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My son has long hair and he does not like to brush or wash it. It is a struggle every time. I triumph enough that there are no parasites or birds nests in it, but not enough that his hair could be considered well groomed, by any stretch of the imagination. The girls from his school have braided and beaded it in strands and I will not be shocked if natural dread locks spontaneously appear.
This is Y I am talking about, Younger.
Y. is the boy I always looked for in the mirror as a child. I used to stare and stare into the mirror and search for a boy, I just had a feeling that my face would be a perfect boy face, and that one day there would be a boy with my face. I was right. There is a boy with my face and its Y. and he wasn’t with me in the mirror (except as a spark in my eye and a warmth in my soul), but he is with me now and is more wonderful than I imagined he would be.
I feel like before I had Y I spent my whole life searching for him. When I watched the Home Alone movies while babysitting I prayed to have a son one day with all of the pizazz and attitude of that kid, and I got it in spades. Y. is the true boy, the yang to my yin side. Y is all attitude, pure of heart and as fiery as the sun itself. When he races a canoe or takes control of the ball in a soccer game, you do not want to get in his way. If you agree to a lighthearted game of throwing the ball around, it will always end in intense competition-your middle age heart rate spiking up to its ceiling. Y taught me how to play basketball – broke down the entire game for me. I learned how to sink a basket at 34. Y taught me how to fight for the soccer ball- if I didn’t play hard enough or good enough he would stomp away in fury. He gave me a few moments of triumph where I actually scored against him and whooped so hard that you could hear me for a mile.
As a parent, he taught me grace. You could never win a battle, unless you were strong, very strong, so you chose your battles and the ones you did choose, you fought as though your life depended on it. And in a way, it did. Having a happy stable life with Y has always meant that you have to stay strong and fight for what you believe in, and Ys happiness has always been dependent on having a mom who cared enough to see a problem through to its resolution.
When he was little he would kick and hit me, and I learned not to back down or break down. One day, I realized I could even feel perfectly relaxed during the storm.
Y and I are I think as close as two people can be. We are not at all the same (except for quite a bit of likeness in our faces), but we understand each other about as well as two people can.
So Y has messy unkempt hair and that is a battle he has won for now. I can’t help but love him a bit for that.
Playful Pixie 
Posted on October 15, 2011
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