Call Me Charlie

Issue 293

You guys,

We were at the beach on a Saturday afternoon and George was chasing one of his friends on the shoreline. I was laying on a lounge chair and could hear the little girl turn around and say, “No, I’m not playing anymore.” George paused, then he kept chasing her. She screamed.

“George, no!”

I’m not sure who said it first, me or Sam. George stopped and looked at us. “If someone says no you have to stop,” Sam said.

George stomped over in our direction and yelled, “No, Papa!” then he turned and went back to play in the sand with his other friends.

“We should go,” Sam said, even though we hadn’t been at the beach for very long and had no plans for the rest of the day. “This is unacceptable.”

Two weeks earlier, if the same thing had happened, I would have agreed with Sam. I would have packed up our stuff and carried George screaming to the taxi.

But a week earlier, I went and saw a healer on the island.

We heard about the healer through other Boundless parents. Some had seen her in years past; others had booked appointments with her since we arrived in September. They all told stories of her healing, her magic. What did she do? How did she heal? Was this for real?

I booked an appointment under the pretense of hoping she could help with my neck pain, which had worsened since being in Greece, but secretly I hoped for something more, though I didn’t know what, exactly. I didn’t know we would end up talking so much about George.

I told her how he triggered me and how Layla didn’t. How I felt this from the very beginning, when his birth was so hard and Layla’s wasn’t. At one point, later in the 90-minute session—which felt mostly like talk therapy except that she seemed to know certain things without me saying—I burst into tears and at the moment she led me through some breathing exercises, placing one hand on my neck and one on my chest. She had me stand up, and at some point, she had me rub my hands in a circular motion around my pelvis and lower abdomen. I did this for some time.

When it was over, after I went to the bathroom and washed my face—per her instruction—I came back out and sat on the couch, facing her. She told me then that she felt something had changed between me and George when I had my hands on my belly. I nearly laughed. “Great,” I had said, wondering what in the world she could possibly mean by that.

Now I sat on the beach, feeling differently than Sam about George’s behavior. I no longer resonated with the word unacceptable. It felt too harsh. For the past week, every time George did something that would normally trigger me, like whining because he didn’t get his way, or slamming a door shut when he knew not to, I saw him differently. I looked at him in those moments—and there were many—and thought: He is my unmet needs as a child. He is me.

This thought made me go to him, reach for him. At first he averted his eyes, turned his body away from me, like a scared dog who doesn’t trust, but I stayed there, extending my arms to him, and I told him it was okay, and eventually he reached for me, as if all this time—his whole life—he’s just wanted me to hold him, and I’d been refusing to.

Sam and I argued about whether or not to leave. I just wanted to let it be. To let George be. To give him some space. He shouldn’t have yelled at Sam. And he did need to know that when someone tells him no that he has to stop, but maybe he did know. Maybe he understood already.

Sam leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. He was mad at George but more mad at me.

George came over to me about fifteen minutes later, complaining of sand in his eyes. This late in the season the water was too cold and it was very windy, but the kids still enjoyed playing in the sand. I took a baby wipe out of the diaper bag and helped him. Usually at this point I would remind him of what happened, explain why it’s important to stop chasing someone when they say no, further explain that it’s not okay to yell at us, but instead I just wiped his eyes until he said it was better.

He looked over at Sam, now sleeping in the chair. I watched as he walked slowly towards him, then climbed up on top of him, and laid on him, closing his eyes to rest. It was not something he had ever done at the beach, where he was usually go-go-go. Sam, with his eyes still closed, put his hands on top of George, and the two of them laid there together, making amends without words.

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Until next week,

Charlie