Snips 'n' Snails

At Bible School a couple of weeks ago, I watched all the kids in a big room, putting on a little program for the parents. The girls were singing the songs and smiling adorngly at their leaders. Freestone and the other 5-year-old boys were break dancing around the carpet, making superhero sound effects that sprayed all the girls with spit. I had this vague thought: "I wonder how old Freestone will be when he grows out of this rambunctous phase?"

Then I looked over at the 8-year-old boys. They were all doing the chicken dance, hopping on one foot and shoving each other, making machine gun noises as they fell. OK, so 8 is still a rowdy age for boys.

At the pool yesterday, I watched a bunch of 12-year-old boys making fart noises with their armpits. OK, so 12 is still juvenile for a boy. But then one of the bigger boys laughed really loud. I did a double take. The boy was bald. His chest was hairy. It was the DAD! So at 40, boys are still going through the phase where they think armpit noises are funny. Parenting boys should come with a caveat: "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here." These people never grow up. They are ALL Peter Pan. Scott and my brother still hide behind doors at their office and jump out to scare each other. For heaven's sake, they're attorneys. And my dad, at 70, laughs at the pranks until his eyes water.

I think I'm finally used to boy energy. Instead of waiting for Freestone to grow calmer, I embrace the energy. It's him. It's inherent in him to jump off the couch, roll across the room and make loud beeping sounds on his way out the door. It's hard-wired to turn couch cushions into "shoot-guns." I laughed the other day when Ari, Xanthe and Freestone were playing with little dolls in the kiddie pool. Ari and Xanthe were floating their dolls on rafts, giving them high, sweet voices as they talked about where they wanted to float. Freestone was shouting, "Aaaaaaaaghhh!! HELP! My doll is drowning in the ocean! Aaaaaagh!" Which reminds me, the first thing Freestone did when he learned to swim was to perfect the art of pretending to drown. That one, I had to put a stop to.

I used to think the "snips and snails and puppy dog tails" thing was lame. Now it gives me a lump in my throat, as I sneak in to see Freestone asleep in his bed, Star at his feet, his rock collection spilling out of his hand. I look at his soft, downy face, his sun-bleached hair and his chubby hands and wish, for a minute, that he would never grow up.