I get the feeling that I baffle my son. There are times when he looks at me with such confusion and lack of understanding that I have to replay the conversation in my head to figure out where I veered off his race track. The sad, and revealing, truth is that the adult mind is confusing—especially to innocent youth.
The case in point started when we were boating and stopped in the marina for a pair of flip-flops to replace the ones that were lost while rock diving. There was a temporary tattoo booth setup offering airbrushed tattoos. My eight-year-old gravitated to it like children to the latest Toy Story movie. He loves tattoos—a love that I hope with fade fast before he comes home from college with an eagle permanently decorating his chest. It was a nice day and we had just spent two days being baked by the sun and blown by the wind, coming sand and who knows what else out of our hair each night. We were happy to see some civilization. My daughter was excited for ice cream since we couldn’t keep that sort of thing in the cooler. I was thrilled to see a flushing toilet. We happily indulged our children. It was a vacation and we were happy and relaxed. As we drove away in the boat, my sons both sporting fancy barbed wire armbands courtesy of the airbrush artist, my husband was asked if we could get the stuff to do our own tattoos at home. His answer was the usual, “We’ll see.”
When we got home, my son followed us around. He was begging to look on the Internet for airbrush tattoo stuff. He talked about all the things he was going to do, like a cool snake up the side of his neck. He smiled and gabbed excitedly while we washed piles of laundry and rubbed aloe on our burned shoulders. The vacation was over and so was the indulgent mood he had enjoyed at the marina. Now every time he asked about the tattoos he was cut short and told that we didn’t have time.
Finally he started searching for himself. And he found it. The dream kit. Only $249 plus shipping. He was practically vibrating he was so excited. My husband yelled at him that he could save the money if he thought he needed a $250 airbrush—was he out of his mind? Didn’t he know that we have a mortgage? So then he headed in to talk to me. Could I please order it for him? His eyes were confused. In his mind we had told him that it would be no problem to entertain his tattoo fantasy for much longer than a quick trip to the marina and now we were telling him no. And worst of all, we were telling him no for reasons that he didn’t understand. Of course he doesn’t know we have a mortgage. He’s eight. I don’t want him worrying about a mortgage until he has his own home. What I really want is to let him dream. He’s just a kid and reality burns us out so quickly that it’s frightening.
This made me start thinking about my dreams and how little I’ve done to work on them. They are so far down my to-do list that I had pretty much forgotten I had dreams. I’m not talking about the dreams that I thank God for at the end of the day in my prayers. Yes, I have a great family and everyone is healthy and I have money in the bank and a roof over my head and I’m grateful for all of that. It’s the culmination of a lot of simple dreams. But I used to have dreams for myself. Dreams that weren’t tied to my husband or my kids or my boss. I used to want to do some things for myself and I didn’t want my son to forget, at the tender age of eight, how to dream because I knew that life would give him a hefty case of amnesia soon enough. That’s why I just ordered a nice $38 kids airbrush tattoo set. I really, really, don’t want his dream to be a tattoo artist but I really, really want him to keep dreaming.
Don’t we all?
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