The tale of the bear who could not reach his home
Where on earth do I begin with this one? I really don't know, and I am not sure if what I will tell you will make any sense whatsoever, but I'll give it a try. It may make more sense to me if I write it all down.
This morning was meant to be the morning that both boys were having their haircut. Tom had informed me that his head would fall off, followed by a demonstration of him falling to his knees and lying 'dead' on the floor, just to further express his thoughts. I tried my hardest not to laugh as he was being very serious and dramatic. Anyway, this made me realise that he was not at all happy about the prospect, but I thought, well, we'll see how he is before we need to get him dressed and out of the house. We had a few hours from this outpouring of emotion that I believed he would get dressed and go with us.
However everything changed when he found the 'lullaby'. This is one of those soothing lullaby toys that a baby will have placed over their cot, you know, the type where you pull the string and a calming tune will play while a cute animal will climb upwards to meet the top of the object that is being suspended over the bed. Well, this particular lullaby toy was Stephen's, and then later on Tom's, and I had forgotten all about it. Tom and Stephen were playing in Stephen's room this morning and somehow Tom had managed to find it, he finds everything. So, unbeknown to me they had sat playing with it but then Tom had become suddenly distressed. After the music had stopped playing the bear had not gone all the way up to the moon.
He was shouting that it was broken as the cuddly bear could not reach the moon (it was not intended to so do so, as there is a short piece of string that allows the bear to dangle from the moon) however in Tom's eyes, this meant that the toy was broken and that the bear could not reach the moon, his home. It took me a while to figure out why he was so distressed. I just thought it was simply that he did not understand that the toy was indeed not broken, but his understanding went much deeper than this. His understanding was that the bear could not go home and this is what was ultimately distressing and saddening to him.
So I did what I thought was the right thing and hid the toy. But I obviously did not hide it well enough as Tom was determined to find it and he did. This then resulted in more upset and asking me to hold the moon and 'fix it'. I did not know what to do. How could I make everything better for him? Somehow, I managed to distract him and I once again hid the toy, in my sock drawer this time, and luckily he did not find it. However he did look and he asked me where it was. I don't know where this thought came from, but I told him, 'the lullaby is now in space'. Miraculously this calmed him. He ran to our bedroom window and looked out at the sky and asked me,' is lullaby in space?' And I said, 'Yes, it floated up into the sky'. At this point I was rescued by Andrew who had just popped out of the shower and had heard our conversation. He went to the window where Tom was standing and asked him, 'do you want to see the lullaby in the sky, on my phone?'
Andrew has an app on his phone that allows you to see all of the stars in the sky by pointing the phone towards the sky. So he did this, he showed Tom the night sky and pointed to a star telling him that this was the lullaby, on its way to the moon.
Tom was so happy and even more so, relief was clearly evident on his face. His beloved bear was going home.
Needless to say because of all the upset and the fact that he thought his head was going to fall off, Tom never made it to the hairdressers, but in the great scheme of things, this seemed unimportant. There will be another day when I can take him.
I forget sometimes how Tom sees the world; he sees it in a totally different light to those around him. It's not wrong, just different, but at times it is so very difficult to understand and we both become frustrated as we cannot communicate what we both feel and understand to be true.
However today was different. Today was about my little boy who was upset about a little bear. A little bear who in his eyes, was not able able to go home.