learning.

your child (especially if he's a boy) might run around in his "weapon" shoes ("do you know why they're called weapon shoes, mama? because i can run as fast a bullet shooting out of a gun in them") and create swords and guns and cannons out of everyday, household objects, and you worry just a little about what kind of person he will become. but then you read him a book about a man selling his ox at the market or wilbur the pig coming close to dying (though not charlotte actually dying, oddly enough) and he begins to cry, and you think, oh thank goodness, there's some empathy in this child yet, and then you read the words of friends, telling him how much he will be missed when he moves across the ocean and he cries again, though he does not want to (where is that message coming from? he's only three!) and it's, ahh, a little heart-breaking, because it's not fiction now. it's lessons he won't learn vicariously through someone else's story, but will feel as much as he needs to feel it. the bitter with the sweet, of his own life. and you, the parent of this boy, are destined to feel that sadness almost as your own, but, oh, you get the joys too. and these are the lessons you are learning.