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End of Innocence
March 28, 2005 | Category: Family, It's a Trip
Let's start with the good news. Because like last week's outfit, you have to hang your hat somewhere and I'm all about the silver lining.
The company was good, the egg hunt in the backyard a happy diversion and I didn't burn the ham. (Normally, we wouldn't worry about my ability to make a ham. I mean, HAM. Puh-lease. But on Saturday night I walloped a roast within an inch of its life and made very wet jerky so I skittered into Easter with a bit of a twitch and shake. Happily, all was well...)
The Menu:
Ham with cherry/orange Grand Marnier glaze
Scalloped potatoes
Mashed sweet potatoes
Asparagus with a citrus cream sauce
Stuffed tomatoes
Sweet baby peas
Homemade bread and fresh butter
Margarita Cheesecake
Chocolate Pudding Pie
Served with: Sangria, water and then coffee service.
Afterwards, we all went out for a waddle. We waddled up the block to the big park.
The playground structure was teeming with kids and parents, so my mom and Bear stopped there while the rest of us waddled the around the park.
By the time we got back, about 15 minutes later, my mother's face was a thundercloud.
Two brothers, aged about 8 and the other about 5, were bullying Bear.
The small one was calling Bear names to get him to chase him and then the big one would come up behind Bear and try to hurt him.
My mother saw what there were up to and stuck close. The small one didn't like that and kept telling my mother to go away and sit down. (How sick is that, telling the grown-up to go away so they could have my son all to themselves?) But even sticking close, her dogged interventions had little effect.
They didn't have any fear of her. They knew exactly how nasty they could be, where the line was. Thankfully, Bear grew pissed-off and marched away, telling them they weren't his friends and he didn't want to play with them.
Bear went off to sit at a picnic bench and he and my mom were sitting there as the rest of us came around the track.
The two boys didn't give up. They were still trying to engage Bear. We could see the little one running over to them, taunting Bear right in front of my mom's face. The big one stood watching from the jungle gym, and even I thought he was creepy and menacing. Such a little kid to have such a nasty expression.
Mom said it was like watching a sick kind of con act. You could tell that they had done this before, the little brother enticing the kids and the big brother hurting them.
As I approached, Bear got irritated and marched over to the where the bigger brother was at the top of a little ladder to confront him. The big brother started swinging his foot as my kid climbed, and you could see the "accidental" foot in my son's face coming.
I shouted, and jogged up. "Hey, big kid, it's time for my son to go home. Do me a favor and don't let him up there!" Big kid looked at me, the 4 adults behind me, and my mother approaching from the other direction, and stopped swinging his foot.
I grabbed my son under the arms and carried him right off the ladder and over to the path, where his dad and Godmother started tickling his exposed tummy. We headed home.
As we left the playground, Bear told us what happened. He told us about how the boys that they weren't his friends and he'd walked away from them.
"How do you feel?" I asked, after we all told him that walking away was the right thing to do.
"Good," Bear said.
We were reminded that in karate class, Bear has been taught how to deal with people who want to hurt him and he showed us how to break away and run somewhere safe and shout for help. That he knows there are bad people in the world.
The problem is that we never told him those bad people could be his own size.
Today, I have to sit down and warn his babysitter about those boys. My stomach hurts. I'm mad. I'm sad. My son is only 4 years old.
But yesterday signaled the beginning of the end of innocence.
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