He's Just a Little Boy or Pearl Jam Scares Me

I made my son cry today. He's emotional and melodramatic -- which is to say that he's too much like me.

I'm afraid to go to a psychiatrist because I feel like if I ever told anyone other than God and Jessica about what goes through my brain that the shrink would be legally obligated to haul me off to jail.

Somehow, Jessica seems to love me without reservation which is also to say that she must suffer from some kind of neurosis as well.

Now, I'm afraid that Zeke has caught my disease. I know this is not an uncommon theme -- dad hates himself, dad sees his own imperfections in son, dad puts undue pressure on son to be perfect.

For example, I'm terrible at sports. I enjoy playing, I enjoy watching, I just stink at it. My parents never wanted me to play anything other than tennis so I never really learned how to throw a football well and I never really figured out how to dribble a basketball without tripping over myself. It's too easy to imagine how much that sucked growing up -- consistently being picked last during team sports is a terrible feeling.

So now, I push Zeke into sports. And, like good 'ol dad, he's more inclined to stay home and watch movies or play video games. It frustrates me. He senses my frustration and becomes upset. Seeing him upset, makes me feel guilty. To get rid of the guilt, I blame it on Jessica. Jessica gets angry and then she kicks the dog.

That last part's not true. We ate the dog years ago like a good American/Vietnamese family.

I fear that in my quest to help my son learn how to be a man that I'll somehow unintentionally break him. I'm reminded of the song "Jeremy" by Pearl Jam. The daunting base-line that begins the song and permeates the rhythm does a great job of conveying danger and caution.



Anyhow, that story about sports is just one example of how I've unintentionally made him overtly scared of me. Don't get me wrong, he runs, and smiles, and jumps, and plays, and goofs, and is an all-around happy kid -- except when I say or do anything remotely negative sounding. No matter how much I try to hide it, he can sense when I'm displeased. I know this because this is how I made him cry, and we're not even on the same continent. Heck, we're not even in the same hemisphere.

I FaceTime'd the family from Djibouti, Africa where I'm currently serving with the military. I spoke to each of the kids individually and I had an especially fun time FaceTiming with Zeke. He passed the iPad over to his mom. We were in the middle of a conversation when suddenly Jessica chastised Zeke, who was off-screen, for chucking a five pound weight roughly on the floor. Zeke came onto the screen and all it took was him seeing me furrow my brow and the sound of my voice sternly saying his name for him to run away crying to the bathroom.

He's so much like me and I can't stand it. He can probably sense that too. I remember being his age and being criticized by my strict Viet Nam war refugee parents. It felt terrible. They taught me to always put on my brave face, which I did, but I remember being in a state of constant turmoil, always doubting whether I was good enough in their eyes. Now, I fear I'm shackling this on to Zeke.

Jessica would say that this entire post is silly and unnecessary and that the only thing I suffer from is overthinking/overanalyzing the issue. And, she's probably right. I was talking to Jessica on the phone a couple of hours after the incident and Zeke asked to talk to me. I took the opportunity to apologize for sounding overly stern. To my surprise, he was completely over it and really just wanted to tell me a "knock-knock joke." We had a good laugh and he told me he loved me. He was fine, he had forgiven me.

Either that or he was just doing what I used to do as a kid, and buried his sadness to make me happy. I forget sometimes that he's just a little boy.



The Fray are relevant here. One of their hit songs is called, "How to Save a Life." I looked on Wikipedia and here's an explanation of the song:

"According to lead singer, pianist and songwriter Isaac Slade, the song was composed and influenced by his experience while working as a mentor at a camp for troubled teens:

“

One of the youngsters I was paired up with was a musician. Here I was, a protected suburbanite, and he was just 17 and had all these problems. And no one could write a manual on how to save him.

”

Slade claims that the song is about all of the people that tried to reach out to the boy but were unsuccessful. As Slade says in an interview, the boy's friends and family approached him by saying, "Quit taking drugs and cutting yourself or I won't talk to you again," but all he needed was some support. The boy was losing friends and going through depression. He lost his best friend and could not deal with it. The verses of the song describe an attempt by an adult to confront a troubled teen. In the chorus, the singer laments that he himself was unable to save a friend because he did not know how."

I want my son to have standards. I want to prepare him to face a tough world. But I also want him to be full of charity and to recognize the beauty that exists in life. I want him to be spirited and full of zest. I don't know how to do these things and it scares me. I'll probably just do what I always do -- ask Jessica.