Childhood naiveté

The day Liam stopped believing in Ariel the Little Mermaid, both of us felt genuine heartache.   It was a loss. The sting felt like the dejection of a first break up.   “Mom, she’s not real,” he told me with sad eyes.  My jaw dropped. Not because I too believed in mermaids, but because he’d spent so many days being in 2, 3, and 4- year old love with her.  Now she was gone.

She was his declared ‘true love.’ He talked about kissing her.  He would see her on a friends’ lunch box or coloring book and mention how beautiful she was and that one day they would be together.   

His plan was, when he “got big,” to grab ‘Prince Derek’ out of the T.V. and steal Ariel right at the last minute before they wed.  Of course she would be happy to be whisked away. She’d forever stay human and Liam and his new bride would be blissfully happy together.  But then, he found out.  I  suppose he couldn't go on believing in Mermaids forever but it just seems that life was fuller with imaginary girl-friends, than without.

This is also the same year his friend spilled the beans about the non-existence of dragons.  He is however, still extremely curious about dragon myths and the supposed dark ‘dragon caves’ behind his Papa Richard’s house.  He hasn’t quite put things together that Eggy, his giant ‘dragon egg’ who lives in his room, was fabricated from a bowling pin. He instead thinks he was just a dud egg, simply mislabeled as a dragon.

Another milestone I wasn’t quite ready for came this week when got his first loose tooth after eating an apple. Yes it happens to everyone but, it was a BIG deal. He’d learned about the loose tooth phenomenon from a book but we’d told him it wouldn’t happen ‘til he was 6. So the sudden onset of his instantly wiggly tooth came as a shock.

 

“A loose tooth!! But I’m not READY to be big!” 

Rather than being excited for the tooth fairy, he was just worried that life would turn serious.   We all tend to set the expectation that when we pass a milestone, we will transform into a changed person. So I assured Liam that he would still be the same Liam, minus 1 tooth.

 I was caught off guard by the apple chomping/tooth dislodging incident and he could tell. He looked at me and said “Mom, am I making you sad because I got a loose tooth and I wasn’t supposed to yet?” 

I gave him a huge hug and told him he was totally going to love his loose tooth, that it was exciting. “Plus, when in life do you get money under your pillow for doing nothing?” How could he argue with that?