To Bully and To Be Bullied

If it didn't hurt my heart to I would photograph Benici's left eye. It has three scratches that form a ring around a textbook little shiner. The worst is that I think I KNOW how he got it. No, the worst is that I know from whom he got it and that Benicio chooses to protect the kid's name. Benici maintains that he "fell." Even though I know the toy in question is a little triangle jet-pack. My blood is boiling. I applied Neosporin to the cuts three times today and had to bite my tongue from asking again and again how he got this. Geoff and I were both there and we really want to protect his decision not to disclose the sequence of events. He clearly does not want our pity. And I know that a mother's pity does not a man make. My first few rounds at asking for the story I was feeding him the script, "Did someone want the jet pack? Was there a scuffle of arms and elbows?" He wouldn't budge.

It is on days like this that I hate community. I wish I could shrink back from friendships and shelter my precious babies from aggressive frat boy behavior. Or I wish I could offer other parents books on discipline or boundaries. The thing is I know that these parents do have books on these topics, that they grieve to see their kids hurt other kids. If they don't grieve, they are embarassed and flustered. What's weird is that these same bullies have offered the hand of friendship to my sons. And for some reasons that I get and some reasons I find masochistic, they have reciprocated.

Tonight at our neighbor's Slip n' Slide Party with about 10 families sipping Rolling Rock and watching our kids frolic on this giant lawn in Germantown, there was some teasing and Manny came up to me and said, "Mom, their calling mean names over there." He went back to the group. In a minute he returned to me, confidence regained, "Mom, you know what I called (this kid)? I called him "Squirrel Acorn!" I bit my lip and my friend said, "Saying that empowered him. That was from inside him." Our other friend said, "That one is for the books."

Our sons are so different but on these languid and structure-free summer days, I see them depend on eachother more and more. The hope is that they will have eachother in the face of bad bullying behavior. That they will have an adventure to live and that they will rescue the glory and might of brotherhood.

This week, we went to ride scooters at the park and my boys were running and playing "Supers" and this younger boy was watching them and then returning to his mother's side. Then I heard the mother tell the child not to be afraid of the big boys. It occured to me and Manny and Benici that they have reached an age that they are now formidable, that they have a playground prescence. I tried to ask them not to scare the little kid and Benici said, "But we're supers." And Manny said, "If he gets scared, that's an accident." I can see how it's a balance, letting them be their full-on unapologetic male selves and then having them be tender-souled inclusive cooperative selves. It's in me too, I wanted to shove the jet pack kid off the trampoline. I had visions of choking the smirk off his face. And yet, later the same kid was listening to Manny's silly word combinations and was convulsing in paroxsysms of laughter. This is friendship, I guess. Being in the game, offering the vulnerable hand and risking that it might be bitten. But then knowing others well, seing God's image in them and walking with them through this life.