I've actually thought about this subject since the day The Boy was born. What goes on in his head? What is he thinking? What makes him tick?
I wonder if we really think about the personhood of the child we're making when we undertake to make a new person. It's crazy, isn't it? We decide we want "a baby." But what we've made is a person. That person thinks, reacts, feels, analyzes, daydreams, supposes, assumes, wonders, hopes, and fears all separately from us, outside of our control.
I find it a little unsettling . . . because I know that some of the things that happen in my head can be dark and scary. I don't want that for The Boy.
But then, yes, I do . . . Because I want him to be a person, a great person. And that's what happens in the heads of even the greatest among us, sometimes dark and scary things.
Too, I may be upended a bit by the notion that this little body who was, not so long ago, a part of my own, is so separate and distinct, independent and decisive. Once, I made every decision for the two of us, when we were one. But even now, at age 22 months, that's not true.
His brain is magnificent. Although he cannot form real sentences yet (oh, they're just almost there), he understand everything he hears. He sometimes gets our joked . . . he makes his own jokes. He understands what goes with what and where. He has preferences. Recently, he asked (in his toddler way) to have a picture of himself and his three-year-old cousin in his room.
If I can see all of that (and more) going on, what else is also going on? I want to know everything he thinks. And that's the heartbreak. I can't know. He's not 100% mine anymore, not even now. He is so much his own person, and I can only know that part of him that he will allow me to see. Every person has his or her secret place where no one else can enter, even my sweet little boy.
