Grown Up

So I was making a kind of dive bar/dance club playlist for my fantasy yoga class while Ax piled every single pillow and cushion in our house up on a chair and climbed up it and jumped off it onto bean bags over and over again. So we were hanging out, me playing loud snippits of Sweet Home Alabama and DJ Got Us Fallin’ In Love and Islands in the Stream and When It’s Love on the Sonos speaker Mike got me for my birthday when a song came on that Ax didn’t like. He stopped climbing and jumping, put his head down, way down, into his chest, and seemed about to burst into tears. “Ah, crap,” I thought. But I said, “Ax, honey, what’s going on?” And I turned off the music. He was misty-faced and inarticulate. I hugged him tight, and he burrowed his head into my chest. I said, “Was it that song?” He nodded yes and I said, “We don’t have to play that song then.” He said, “Okay,” sniffled a bit, and got himself together. I put on Final Countdown, one of his current favorite songs and we danced and air-drummed and guitared between his beanbag jumps.

Much of the time I have to hold the line with this kid, make him brush his teeth, make him get to things on time, make him put on clothes for public events, encourage this or that. But I don’t need to make him listen to music he doesn’t like, or go to the beach when he doesn’t want to go to the beach, or teach him to suck up whatever there is to be sucked up. I’m the grown up.