Embrace the Scary

My son is 9. As I write this, he is out back throwing the pigskin around with his daddy and friend, barefoot I’m sure. Frankly, he is good at every sport he tries. He loves Legos and video games and Beyblades and Pokémon cards. He’s a boys-boy, the kind that starts to smell ripe before the others. But my boy, he is also complicated. He is smart and kind and sweet to the core but carries around this innate shyness and distain for bringing attention upon himself.

I’m so proud of the person he is and is growing up to be, but sometimes I struggle to know how to connect with that shyness as I was always the child who posed for pictures thinking she was one day going to be on the Silver Screen. I’m not saying I had realistic goals but hiding from attention is not something I understand. Therefore, being his mommy when it relates to this specific trait had been quite challenging… but oh, so rewarding.

You see, Halloween has always been our jam. Don’t get me wrong, James and I have many different jams, but dressing up together was really our thing. Some years we’d coordinate whereas other years, I was thankful for Amazon’s overnight delivery on something I could throw over my work clothes. Unfortunately, my last job typically had their yearly inventory around this time so I was beyond exhausted, but no matter what, I never missed an opportunity to dress up with my boy… that is, until, this year

For the past few months, I have been asking my Jimmy-Jam what he wanted to be this year but, to my dismay, he said …. NOTHING. No, not that he ignored me, but he said he didn’t want to dress up. I thought he was in a mood, but when we only had one week left, I realized he wasn’t changing his mind. This is when it hit me.. like a ton of freakin’ bricks. It’s not that my son is just growing up, but he’s growing up not according to the timeline I had envisioned. I pride myself in always ‘living in the moments’ but when I realized my assumption that we had many more years of trick-or-treating fun wouldn’t come to fruition, I was devastated.

No amount of beseeching or bribing (yes, I bribe on the regular) could persuade him … I quickly realized that it wasn’t him with the issue, but me. I took a step back, took a breath and embraced it. My James is a go-with-the-flow kid and for him to have an opinion, let alone a firm one, I had to respect it. I know he is only 9, but he is growing up and we’re forming a relationship of trust and support, even if I don’t understand it. My husband thought I was off my rocker for being okay with James hanging back and passing out candy, but we had to just let it play out.

So this year, James and I taste-tested candy while ooh’ing and ah’ing over the costumes of fellow trick-or-treaters. We bundled up under covers and shared a thermos of hot cocoa with marshmallows while talking about our day. At one point I asked him if he wished he would’ve gone and his response tore at my heartstrings… He said “Not at all, mommy. I got hot cocoa, to taste-tested candy but my favorite part is I got to hang out with you.”

This Halloween has taught me to embrace the scary as sometimes what you get on the other end is so much sweeter.