Of Rock Star Gloves

I post a lot about my five-year-old son. I don’t talk about him much on my blog, but he is a regular fixture on my Facebook and Twitter accounts. What can I say? The kid is extremely entertaining, and I can never predict where he will end up once he gets started.

Take this morning, for example. He crawls out of bed after I have been in the kitchen for a few minutes getting started on breakfast and packing his lunch. After asking what day it is (he does this most mornings) and some other chitchat, I turn to work on his lunch, when he says, “Dad! Dad! Look at me!”

I turn around and he is standing on one foot, the other foot drawn halfway up off the ground, like a flamingo. His palms are pressed together at his chest in an obvious gesture of supplication. He is wobbling, trying to keep his balance. He looks at me and says, “Look, I am making a wish!”

He then closes his eyes, still on one foot, and mutters something under his breath. Then he stomps his lifted foot down to the floor with a sweeping forward flourish, separates his hands, and looks back up at me with triumph.

I stare back, unsure of quite what to say. I am unfamiliar with this wishing ritual and for a flash I think that it looks like some sort of quasi-Buddhist act like you might see in a cartoon. I also wonder whether I should ask what he wished for, but suspect it might be bad luck to do that. However, he eases this concern for me unprompted by asking, “Wanna know what I wished for?”

“Of course!” I respond. “What did you wish for?”

“Rock star gloves! For you!”

Not at all what I expected. “For me? Why for me?”

With a huge grin, he answers, “Because you look like a rock star!”

I am, at the time he says this, wearing a plaid shirt of dark blue and red, shirt tail out, and a pair of khakis. I am a pair of bib overalls away from being dressed to host the 4:30 am farm report on TV. I am suddenly overwhelmed with gratitude that my darling son thinks that, even in my staid getup, I look like a rock star.

He will not always look at me like that, of course. That is fine. Someday he will come to terms with the very real, very un-rock-star, very limited me. But for now, let me just imagine the creased leather of these rock star gloves on my fingers.