Love and Dinosaurs

I love my son’s mind. It stretches and weaves. It jumps from one topic to another faster than crickets on a summer’s night. Sometimes I have a hard time following where it will go next. Will he surprise me by quoting poetry or will he tell me he can count to ten thousand in increments of one hundred. I look at his tenderly soft cheeks and his perfectly formed hands and I wonder how I deserved this masterpiece. Most of all I wonder if I am capable of raising him to be the man he is meant to become.

At five he struggles between his brilliant brain and his childlike curiosity. Like any other five year old he constructs spaceships and castles out of Legos but then he immerses himself for hours in his astronomy books and models. He can quote facts and figures related to space travel as easily as he can run in circles juts to see how fast he can go. I love his versatility. I acknowledge his childhood. I marvel at his capacity for love and friendship.

Someday soon my son’s mind will outgrow me. I have to be okay with that. What I don’t have to accept is him outgrowing me. So, while I search for new ways to increase his knowledge and accommodate his ever growing need for mental exercise I am also hugging him when falls. And kissing him whenever possible. I am giving him every bit of the love I have. When the day comes that I know he no longer needs my help with learning. When I become expendable to his quest for information, and that day is right around the corner, the one thing I will always have for him is love. Because along with the names of every dinosaur, he learned love from me.