Oddly Shaped
Something interesting happened last month. My youngest son, with whom I share a special connection, suddenly turned on me.
It could have been after a conflict we had about some of his homeschooling work or some other dumb threat I issued when he wasn’t cooperating about something, but whatever it was, things are different now.
I’m 45 and he’s almost 7.
I’m a grown-ass man and he’s a kid.
Kids only rhythm is whim and caprice.
Sensitive middle-aged guys like me take this stuff (way) too seriously.
Thankfully, my wife reminds me it’s all a phase, and that normal relations will resume. She says all this as she and him now have this uber-close relationship. Not that they haven’t before, but now it’s in my face.
Am I jealous?
And all while this is happening, my eldest son is now my BFF, when just a few months ago, he wanted nothing to do with me.
And just prior to that, my wife and I were off for a while, which is when I swooped in on my youngest and made him the apple of my eye.
Just what is going on in this telenovela in miniature? Where else do you have a two boys under ten and a mother and father in their forties vying for each other’s love and affection?
In a family.
I’ve often called it the love trapezoid. It’s not a triangle with three parties. No, this is something different. It’s rectangle-like, but oddly shaped. It’s at times symmetrical, but off in some way. Sometimes one line is longer than the other, highlighting the distance between two points.
Those points, of course, are the people you love, and the people who love you—or who sometimes don’t love you. Or rather, who sometimes need to move to a different end of the trapezoid.
Maybe your shape is a pentagon, or hexagon. Maybe it’s a perfect square, or better yet, a circle. Whatever it is, it always changes. It’s fluid and malleable. What’s most important, however, is that it remains together, and that no matter the distance between the corners or curves, the shape is unique, strong, and beautiful in its own way.
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Photo by George Pagan III on Unsplash
