Reflection

Sometimes at the end of the day when I think about what transpired in the hours preceding I go to bed feeling heavy. Like tonight.
Ben is so much like his dad. He is thoughtful, sensitive, literal and tries so so hard to do it right.
He wants the expectations to be clear and he very much wants to be successful. He can be very hard on himself and sometimes I can be hard on him. Because I am so used to him doing it right.

Now that he is the big BIG brother I have been relying on him...and counting on him and he comes through. He is such a helper. He is so kind and protective of his brother and sister. He so wants to please me.Sometimes I catch his fleeting side long glances for approval too late. I know he just wants me to see him.
 Desperately he wants to make me happy.

When he was a little over two I remember an afternoon when he would not nap. I kept going into his room after he would call and call for me. Patience was not on my side regretfully and I snapped at him "JUST GO TO SLEEP!" I was instantly sorry. My heart still moans at the memory. His little face, startled by my sudden turn of anger, crumpled. His eyes pooled with tears and his shoulders hunched, as they have always done in defeat. "I just want you to be haaaaaapppy". he sobbed in his tiny lisped toddler voice.
And he does.
I believe that all children just really, desperately want their parents to be happy.

That is why I only cry in the bathroom.
 Until the boy I thought was upstairs scurried away when I unlocked the door and I fear that he is not unaffected.  I pray he doesn't believe he is the cause of any of it. I try so hard to be...happy.
For them. 

But today I was ....tired. Tired of so much.
And I was counting on my almost 5 year old little boy to hold things up.
And now I just can't seem to sleep on that reflection.
 I want him to be a boy. There is too much "grown up" in his world. Conversations that I don't want him to overhear daily. Conversations that started 8 months ago when I had to figure out, somehow, how to talk to this little boy about Cancer. And what that meant and how our life would be changing. I knew that he would have to grow up a little, right then, in front of me.

Tomorrow he will be a boy.
And I will make absolutely positively certain he knows how precious and wonderful he is. How he has it so "right", and how very very happy he makes me.