It was a love affair that began with pictures.
My son and this girl would colour pictures during creative time, and each one would address their picture to the other. It wasn’t until after the second or third such picture I saw coming home that I realized that it was getting serious. They were innocent enough: pictures of two people standing together. Pictures of houses. And each was marked in the corner with to and from.
I don’t know who started it. I volunteered in the classroom, but usually behind the scenes. So I made a point to put a face to the name of the girl who my son was romancing in crayon. She was a cute; a year younger than he, with big eyes and blonde hair, usually in pigtails.
When their class made Christmas cards for mom and dad before break, my son addressed his instead to Santa. “Dear Santa,” he wrote, in that huge, confused Kindergarten script, “I want Eva.”
When I raised my eyebrow at him, he added verbally “to be my friend!”
Whew.
I may have indulged in a few daydreams about my son one day marrying this girl. It was cute and sweet, the sort of stuff more likely to be found in Hollywood than reality.
And then school came back in session, and in spite of the joy he had about going to school, he came back home depressed.
Eva was moving to another school. She came in long enough to say goodbye.
I never thought I would have to deal with my son’s love and heartbreak this early in his life.
The poor guy; he was so down about it. Even though he’s getting big, I picked him up like the little baby man he used to be and snuggled him.
When that still didn’t cheer him up, a tickle fest finally brought a smile back to his face.
“There will be other girls,” I told him. “You wait and see.”
“Mommy,” he said as he squeezed me as hard as he could, “I love you a million billion. I want to marry you some day.”
Uh oh.
