I took him to buy sneakers. The ones he was wearing were ill-fitting and full of holes. He picked a pair of Adidas with a clamshell toe, but they didn't have his size. I ended up ordering them. After walking out of the outlet store with one pair in hand, one pair on foot, and a third on order, he turned to me and happily exclaimed, "These are so cool! No one has ever even worn them before!" My heart broke, and I had to fight the urge to go back in and buy three more pairs.
I love both his smiles... the one he shows when he thinks he should be smiling, and the real one when his eyes match.
He is happy go lucky on the outside, but there is so much stress contained within. At the mere mention of a county or agency worker, he will spontaneously get a nosebleed and a stomachache. When I told him he was staying, out of his nine year old mouth came a 50 year-old, "Finally! Permanency!" and a hundred questions about how it could all go wrong. For the first 48 hours, he worried silently and was stunned when one of us would sit him down and "read his mind" about what was bothering him. I doctored more nosebleeds than I can count over those two days. He is beginning to believe it now - that we do want him, even after he makes mistakes, and that he can stay.
He is happy go lucky on the outside, but there is so much stress contained within. At the mere mention of a county or agency worker, he will spontaneously get a nosebleed and a stomachache. When I told him he was staying, out of his nine year old mouth came a 50 year-old, "Finally! Permanency!" and a hundred questions about how it could all go wrong. For the first 48 hours, he worried silently and was stunned when one of us would sit him down and "read his mind" about what was bothering him. I doctored more nosebleeds than I can count over those two days. He is beginning to believe it now - that we do want him, even after he makes mistakes, and that he can stay.
No comments:
Post a Comment