Thursday, July 17, 2008

Help me Obi-Wan; you're my only hope


My niece, Jane, I am told, will often toddle around the house, out of nowhere say, "Ben," and then start giggling. I do the same thing, actually, and you would too if you met him, after taking a couple of Tylenol and a nice long bath to recover. Of all my darling children, he is the most mysterious and fascinating to me. I see plenty of myself in Mary and Priscilla. Elijah is a clone, essentially, of my older brother, Bobby. But Benjamin...ah, Benji, he is like an unexplored jungle in that while I marvel at the beauty of his exoticness, I am often holding my breath in a sort of nervous anticipation of the unexpected dangers lurking just around the corner. "HEY!" he called out recently to a woman who was speed walking down our sidewalk. "DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU LOOK LIKE?" and then I froze in utter terror; should I tackle him? Create a diversion? And just when I was assuming the worst, he answered, "PAIGE! YOU LOOK JUST LIKE MY AUNT, PAIGE!" and the woman smiled and Benji went back to wielding a bumblebee handled jump rope like an "Indiana Jones" whip, and I waited until my heart resumed a normal amount of beats per second before kissing him on the forehead. He flashed me a wild smile and then was off again into the recesses of his own imagination - slaying a slobbering Jabba the Hut, rescuing entire cities from the evils of that trickster, "The Riddler," employing every fantastical power in existence to become a super hero.

2 comments:

Kelleylynn said...

Me thinks that our children would get along very well!
Luke, a.k.a Peter Parker/Spiderman or Anakin Skywalker or Superman or...you get the picture.
We must schedule a play date :)
Ben sounds wonderful!
I call it my "comic relief" -- God knew what he was doing giving me Luke because I needed a good dose of humor.
Isn't it amazing that 4 little ones, in the same household, can have such diverse personalities?!

Molly Sabourin said...

My son's would be more than envious that your son's name is Luke. Come on out to Indiana for the day:)