Monkeying Around

I'm proud of my son all the time. For being smart, for being strong, for being funny - and probably to his detriment, I tell him (and everyone else) all the time. But yesterday I was proud for a different reason.

As throngs of people descended on Monkey Joe's Sunday around noon, we were there to collect his "prize" for having gotten his stickers at school all week. It. was. crazy. busy. Kids everywhere, butting in line, pushing each other down, bouncing on top of each other, wiping their noses on each other. A mother's nightmare. But Ely insisted, and I had promised. As he ran off to join them, I said a little prayer to the God of Childhood Infectious Diseases (should there be one in some religion somewhere).

All day long I watched my son and marveled at the things he had learned, even if they were things I never intended to teach. He let littler children go in front of him, and patiently waited as they carried their little chunky thighs up the foam stairs. He never got upset when bigger children on their way to conquest of the giant bouncy slide blew by him and knocked him down. After descending the inflated stairs from each mom-can't-see-you-and-gets-really-nervous obstacle course, he'd do a scan, locate my bright pink sweatshirt, smile, and hop onto the next collossal monstrosity. When older girls blocked the tops of the slides - requiring passwords, playing exclusionary games, waging friendship wars that in only a few years turn into hurtful cliques - he calmly said "Excuse me" and wedged his way through without pushing or violence. He was hyper-aware in each bouncy castle, checking to make sure he wouldn't jump on anyone or get in anyone's path as they cartwheeled into the walls.

And then, in one still-unbelievable incident, he took my breath away. He had climbed into one of the giant bounce castles and began trying to show me his "C drop" that he learned on the trampoline in gymnastics. Meanwhile, the mother next to me was yelling at her 6 or 7-year-old daughter, asking her to please help her 20-month-old brother, still in diapers, out of the way-too-busy-for-a-little-baby bounce house. Her daughter was ignoring her, as daughters often do, but I could tell Mom was getting increasingly nervous as her son literally was tossed among the waves of jumpers. Ely had been listening (shocker!). He calmly scooted over on his knees to the little one, took his tiny hand, and gently helped him crawl his way toward the mesh opening. Like a boy far beyond his 4 years, he said to the little one, "Let's go find your mama."  The mother scooped up her son in a relieved hug, and Ely picked up where he left off - mid-C drop - as if nothing extraordinary had just happened.

Ely, unbeknownst to him, reminded me how important it is to live compassion. Not *teach* compassion, for it is a virtue difficult to instill in another except by example. Daddy shows him to always be careful of "the babies" - our tiny infant plants in the yard. Mama shows him how to help elderly strangers at the grocery store. His school teachers help him take turns and wait patiently in line. Somehow and even without siblings to care for (and perhaps because he doesn't have siblings to fight with), he has learned compassion. And for this, mama couldn't be prouder.