Boy 1 came to live with us when he was a year old.  He was rather large for his age, being of Hawaiian descent.  The first thing Dear Man said when he saw him was, "He's so big!"  He wasn't pudgy, he was solid, everywhere.  He looked at you with a solid a gaze, he had a solid appetite and he slept so solid that a freight train crashing through his room couldn't have awakened him.  His foster mama had done a wonderful job of making him feel loved and secure. 

I once bathed boy 1 with a little friend of his the same age.  From all outward appearances this friend looked as big as Boy 1.  I bent over to pick up Boy 1 and put him in the tub.  It was like heaving a ton of bricks.  I bent over to pick up the little friend and was astonished when my fingers sank into his fresh marshmallow body.  I was in the motion of moving him into the tub and had expected to heave him in as well.  I nearly threw him across the tub and into the wall! 

Boy 1 has remained solid and he looks at life in a concrete way.  For several months I had been telling him to look at his own life before he went around critisizing others.  He was forever sticking his nose where it didn't belong, just so he could tell on them.  One day while in the car he was waving something around and poked his sister in the eye.  I told him that he needed to think of others and quit thinking only about himself. I caught his bewildered expression in the rearview mirror as he said, "But you always tell me to mind my own business!"  Yes, well.  How does a parent teach minding your own business and thinking of others at the same time?  Oh, of course,  The Golden Rule!

He is all boy, jumping, running, go, go, go, one minute and the biggest couch potato I have ever seen the next.  Once again I confuse him with my seemingly contradictory speeches.  "Sit still!"  "Get up and do something!" 

When he was five he was invited to a birthday party for a little girl.  He was very excited and when we went to go look at getting a present he knew exactly what he wanted for her.  A strand of pink pearls.  I have no idea how he came up with the idea, he just knew she liked pink, and he felt she would like a necklace.  He was dead on!  Have you ever seen a five year old girl look as if she had just been proposed to by her father?  She was all aglow and everyone commented on what a lady killer Boy 1 was going to be.  The perfect match, good looking, and he knew exactly how to get to a girls heart.  It made my beating heart stop in dread!

He has only one love in his life, all other girls pale in comaparison.  He's loved her for five years now.  She thinks he's the cat's meow!  Just the mention of her name makes him blush.  They have never held hands or kissed, they just play at various innocent things like bug squashing and chicken chasing.  Our family thinks she is the greatest and maybe someday he will propose to her.  Their ages still only being in the single digits we have plenty of time.  He's got a long way to go yet before that day comes. 

He is a thinker, and when he finally tells you what's on his mind, you wonder how long has he been thinking about that?  This past summer he came to me very worried.  "You know how God made the whole universe?  Well, what if he hadn't?  Then we wouldn't be here at all."  I told him that since God did make the whole universe we had nothing to worry about.  "It's still scary to think about though," he said.  So it is.

Boy 1 is so simple, and yet so complicated.  He loves with all his heart, is quick to forgive and prays for people who have cancer.  He doesn't like to be hot, doesn't like to be cold, and I don't think there is a perfect temperature for him yet.  His favorite seasons are spring and fall, because in the spring everything is new and green, and because in the fall everything is aflame and dying. 

Our lives are richly blessed with a boy who couldn't have been anymore like Dear Man even if he was genetically his.  This is the child that I have learned to know what it means to be the mother of son.  It's an eye opening experience!  I pray that someday he will be a man of God, and when he does, look out world!  Boy 1 is on the loose!