Tenderhearted things you can learn from a dead slug.

You know it's really easy to label people.  Our spouses, our kids.  Even ourselves.  You get it stuck in your head that someone is one way, and then even though they are many other things as well, that one thing overshadows the others not because it's true (though it may well be) but because you mentally labeled it so.

I spend so much time some days/months/years dealing with the persistent/precocious/persnickety side of Jack's personality, that sometimes I miss the many nuances of his spirit.

The other day in the car we were reminiscing about Sluggo, our little slug friend that we found in our backyard last spring.  The friend that Ben and Molly refused to leave alone and kept sneaking into the house inside all sorts of habitats they created for him; a bowl with leaves, a watering can with water, a pocket...you get the picture.  Slugs just aren't that fast, so he never did manage to escape his suitors.

Eventually, poor Sluggo was loved to an early grave.  And to this day we all sigh and say "Remember Sluggo?" when we need to remind ourselves that sometimes the best way to love nature is to leave it ALONE.

So we were having that talk in the car the other day on the way back from who knows where, and Jack suddenly BURST into great big heaving sobs. 

"Poor little Sluggo!  He deserved to LIVE!!  I feel so AWFUL, so terrible.  He's DEAD!  Because of US!!  What a horrible horrible way to die.  Poor Sluggo!"

Of course this eventually wound it's way to vicious finger-pointing at the perpetrator of the murder, who was in fact, only two at the time and couldn't really be charged with a crime because of his ignorance of the ramifications of squooshing a slug....but I digress...

The point here is that I've got a brilliant, tenderhearted son who also happens to be many other things.  But for one moment I just wanted to preserve that facet of him. 

And maybe if I can seal it into my mind properly, then THAT is what I will see when the many other parts of his personality present themselves to me.  Not my challenging child that is also tenderhearted, but my tenderhearted child that is also challenging.

And maybe it will help me be more tender to him.