Ben had a moment. It was a moment of panic and concern. It was over a situation that I never thought he would take time to imagine. But, he did. In the middle of his dinner, his face turned sad, there were tears in his eyes, and as soon as I noticed, I asked him what was wrong. He looked at me with his watered eyes and said, "I don't want to get married."
I was confused and stunned at the same time. Immediately, my mind began to wander as to why he would make such a comment. I wasn't even sure what made him think about marriage at all! The only question I could think of at that moment was, "WHY?" His answer clarified everything. It all started to make sense.
His answer was, "I don't want to grow up. I just want to stay a kid. I want to turn 6, and then that's it. I don't want to leave this house. I want to live with my mom and dad forever."
It all came back to me. I remember having a conversation with Ben several days prior about marriage when he was looking at our engagement picture. And, during the discussion about marriage, I must have mentioned that we moved out of our homes and moved in together. Out of all the lovely talk about why people get married and how lucky we are to have found each other, the only words that stuck in his mind were..."we moved out of our homes." At that point, he already decided that he will never get married.
After trying to explain that marriage is something that would not happen until he is MUCH older, he wouldn't budge. In fact, he seemed to become more disturbed the more I explained. Finally, I gave up trying. It was too much for a 5 year old to comprehend. So, I said what I had to say to make him feel better, again. I told him, "Fine. You can live with me forever. That will make me very happy!" And, deep inside, it really did.
Now, if only I can get this in writing.
1 comment:
I love your blog! My mom told me a similar story from my childhood. She said I was 4 years old and I was standing in the kitchen watching her clean a chicken ... a whole chicken. Apparently I thought it was very gross and that cleaning chicken is what marriage is all about because I told her, "I am never getting married." She told me that you could buy chickens already cleaned and prepped to try to change my mind. I guess it worked. I love seeing things through the eyes of a child.
Post a Comment