Oh, Thank Cuteness!

My friend Jake, who spearheads Generation Q Magazine, got a blog topic going this week - "Oh, Thank Cuteness!" She wrote about her daughter, and invited the readers to chime in with their versions. She got me to thinking about my son Steve, known to many in my life as The Boy (the capitalization is honorific here) and so here goes...

Steve's personality was evident in utero. Every time we got an ultrasound wand near him he turned his back playfully and kept us guessing as to his gender. We could tickle his feet through my tummy, and in return he would torment me with bump-heaving hiccups. He made us wait to meet him, finally consenting to arrive the better part of a month late. The reward in this is that he smiled early.

From the get-go, he had a sense of humor. Mischief sparkled in his eyes often, and still does. He's relentlessly funny, not in that doesn't-know-when-to-quit annoying way, but in a lightness of being that is just present, even when he's not fully awake. It's a lightness that carries me often, as I tend to take it all a bit too seriously.



At two years old, Steve grabbed the hose while I was washing the car and sprayed me down, squealing. It was the first salvo in water wars that continue between us even today. As a youngster, he would ask the most hair-curling questions, but could find the humor in the then-ickyness of the answers. As a sleepy teen, he took to tapping my head and mumbling "snooze" when I tried to wake him up. I once painted his toenails while he was napping, and he laughed and wore it for the day before asking for the remover.



Steve understands the concept of having fun. He encouraged me to give up the 2-day ritual of decorating for Christmas and instead spend it in pajamas eating leftover Chinese food, while watching a full season of something geeky with him. In fact, this is how we spent our last Thanksgiving together, getting properly dressed only long enough to go to the movies in the afternoon. I reflect back on that day and remember it as one of my faves.

It would be easy to see all this fun and humor and imagine that Steve is just a party guy. Far from the truth. He thinks deeply about lots of things, and continues to ask the tough questions. The first election he voted in was the one that put Schwartzenegger on California's throne, and there was Steve, wading through the pamphlets and brochures, trying to figure out how you pick a winner out of a pack of a hundred when all you can see is the slick marketing.

Like his mama, Steve wears his heart on his sleeve. And literally at that. When he decided to get tattoos, he asked me to help design something that spoke to his ideas of family heritage and life philosophy. No impetuous, beer-fueled doodles for him. I was honored to be trusted with this, and he graciously let me share a version of the same ink (it's on my foot). He has since added more to his collection, all beautiful, and of course, consciously chosen and personally meaningful to him.

Obviously, there is a lot about Steve that has a lot to do with me. But then there is that part that doesn't have anything to do with me at all. It's a construction of what he has observed and tried and discarded, ever refining who he chooses to be on any given day - and I find that I really like that guy. I like how straight he tries to shoot. I admire that he keeps trying. I'm humbled by how loyal he is to those he loves.

We are tight, Steve and I - and this is the greatest thing in the world to me. They say you can tell who a man is by how he treats his mother. Let me tell you... Steve is a good man.