Mama, What's A Stranger?

Today, Finley watched me give money to a man panhandling on a street corner where we were stopped at a traffic light. The man displayed the expected handwritten cardboard sign: "Looking for bus fare." I had a few dollars left from the last time I got cash out of the ATM so I nodded to him and rolled down the window and handed it to him. "God bless you!" He said. "And God bless you, too," I replied. "You know, I have a three year certificate of sobriety", he felt obligated to inform me. "That's great", I offered. The light changed then so we said good-bye.

This is not a blog about charity or the social or political issues of addicts and alcoholics as much as it is a blog about the growing understanding of my son as he takes in his world. We've just recently started talking about "stranger danger." A phrase I absolutely abhor, but feel compelled to bring this concept into my son's awareness as he gets older. Isn't this what a responsible parent should do? As I have to explain to him why I want him to stay in my sight when we are at a store or the zoo. Why he can't go outside in our yard unless I am out there too. What a crying shame. I tell Finley that yes, there are some bad people that we need to be careful about, but when he asks me what a stranger is, I tell him, "A stranger is a friend we haven't met yet."

"Why doesn't that man have any money, Mama?" Finley asks during our discussion today. I replied something about how maybe he doesn't have a job or maybe his brain doesn't let him do things the way he would like or maybe he's sick. Then Finley asks again about what a stranger is. Repetition is so part of a four year old's world. He loves to ask things, even though I've just told him, over and over again. Hearing the explanations about things or the same stories must be very reassuring or just interesting, or maybe its just an important way for him to connect with me. Finley is thoughtful and curious. He makes me think about the assumptions our society makes and how my answers to his questions will inform his opinions, his prejudices, his sense of self and society. The responsibility of it makes me shudder. I pray that his heart can stay open and yet that he stays safe and uses common sense in this world that is full of common thieves and cut throats but also of ubiquitous wonder and marvels and yes, even friends he hasn't met yet.


On Turning Ten
By Billy Collins

The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I'm coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light--
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced at two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.

It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I would shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.