Grace does not do things tit for tat; it acts finally and fully from the start. –Robert Farrar Capon
We’re no longer jet-lagged, so that excuse is off the table. But life itself is tiring, especially to two active boys, and bedtime at our house can get…emotional. And since I’m all about making space for the feelings (a goal recently reinforced by a book my friend recommended, and then my therapist affirmed), I find the process can be…exhausting.
You would not believe (or maybe you would?) the “issues” that resonate with young boys when they are exceptionally tired. There was a full joint meltdown recently over whose Bot Bot was bigger (and this was at 10 am). One gets mad when the other laughs/breathes/sneezes too loudly–and I mean “mad” to the point of “tears.” But what has consumed The Kid’s mind most recently at bedtime is a cosmetic issue of sorts. And it’s piercing my heart.
He doesn’t like his smile.
Self-awareness comes with age, usually, and therapy, definitely, and as my kids grow in self-awareness I both enjoy its fruits and despise its difficulties. They pick up on everything: being treated differently (by friends and…me), they recognise their own emotions and often indulge them to the point of hysteria, and they see the discrepancies between themselves and those around them.
Hence the Smile Issue.
“Why can’t my smile be like my brother’s? I want a perfect smile!” TK wailed the other night as Little Brother slept peacefully on the other side of me. “WHY WON’T GOD LET ME SMILE?!”
Well, that got me. Silver lining notwithstanding (hey, at least he believes in God?!), his pain was evident and I had no idea what to do with it. He’s in that transitional developmental stage that lasts…well, forever, but especially while teeth are being gained and lost, and I think part of the difference he sees is that: the gap-laden mouth of an eight-year-old compared with the white picket fence of his brother.
But there’s also this: their very natures contribute to the way they smile, and LB is adept at the posing. He knows how to pose. And he loves to do it. So when the camera appears, he squints his eyes cutely and grins widely; meanwhile, TK–not much for artifice–is focused more on the effort of it; the technique. So his smile, while its own form of posing, is a bit more…strained. Like me at a social event when a lens is thrust into my face.
Because he and I, we sort of walk through life like this. (Also, not for nothing, there’s the weakened oral musculature with which he was prematurely born, so it actually is harder for him to smile. Which makes him a champion for doing it in the first place, IMHO.)
LB, though, he’s a force of nature–not nurture, apparently, because his social savviness was definitely not derived from our gene pool. He can work a room like no other, talk to anyone, make friends in an instant. I’m stunned by it because I have no idea where he got it and I will never personally achieve it. The flip side of that social mastery, though, is an awareness and sensitivity to the way others treat him, and an intuitiveness about their feelings–both in general, and about him. So while his smile is real, there is so much more behind it.
And isn’t that always the case? Because with TK, while the smile in photos is more forced and effortful, he has another one–we all do–that is free and unfettered. It’s backed up by laughter and euphoria. It’s honest.
We all have an honest one and a…photo-friendly one. A fraught one.
So I tell TK, lying in bed, the truth: that I love his smile, that it’s one of my personal favourites, that every smile is different like a fingerprint and is exactly as it should be, right now. And I feel quite smug and pleased with this well-researched and maternal answer. And it is not enough.
So I tell him–maybe even more gently–that we can practice his smile. And I place my fingers on the corner of his lips and lift upward, and we do that a few times, and I tell him we can do it again tomorrow. And something within him seems to unlock, a weight drifting off. Because for all the truth of different being okay–being wonderful, actually–sometimes we just want someone who will walk alongside us and help lift the weight.
There’s no perfect smile. I know that. But as he drifts off, finally, into his own complicated form of sleep, I do smile–a complicated and real one.