"I want to be like you, dad." - Josh

Josh stood behind me silent. I didn’t even know he was there until I heard something that moved the air, shifted the silence.  It wasn’t a noise, it was movement that I could feel with my ears.

I turned to see him smirking with a tie draped around his neck.  He acts embarrassed when he wants something but doesn’t know how to ask for it. He tilts his head sheepishly and if you keep staring at him it signals that you’re interested in whatever he’s after. I kept my eyes fixed on his broadening smile.

“Whatcha doin’, bud?”

He shuffled around the couch and sat in front of me on the ataman.  He held out the tie.

“Can you tie this for me?”

I went to a Christian school that had a dress code requiring a tie every-single-day-of-the-week.  I don’t know much about much, but know a lot about ties.  He’d seen me get dressed up the week before when I was officiating a wedding and he’s as spellbound watching me put on a suit as a little girl is watching a bride putting on her wedding dress.  Caleb couldn’t care less; Josh is bewitched to the bone.

“Do you like wearing ties, Josh.”  He nodded eyes fixed on my hands. “Why do you like wearing them?” I asked almost knowing the answer.

“Cause I like ‘em.” He was watching me playing around with the length of the thick side on my right and the thin side on my left. There’s a formula behind getting the knot just right and making sure the thick part is long enough and the thin part is short enough, especially when you gotta take it off and transfer it to a little boy’s neck.  

“Do you like wearing a tie ‘cause it makes you feel like a man?”

He smiled wide as the day is long.  

“Yeah.  I wanna be like you.  I wanna be a dad.” 

“Why’s that?”  I thought I’d keep asking questions as long as he was in the mood to answer them.  Something about asking him questions while he was in a trance watching me methodically fold this magic fabric back and forth loosened his tongue. He usually struggles to put his thoughts into words, but not today.

“I wanna get married someday and be like you.”

By this time I had finished the formality, pulling the noose off my neck and gently placing it around his. He stood up straighter and pulled back his shoulders.  I might as well have been knighting him.  

As he took ahold of the tie, I showed him how to tighten it and loosen it.  He watched intently, eyes crossing as his chin rested on his own collarbone.  It didn’t take him long to figure out how it all worked.  

I sometimes forget that my boys worship me.  I don’t say that in jest.  Their hearts worship in spirit and truth.  This isn’t to say they always obey me, they don’t.  Or to suggest that I am a god, I’m not.  It’s just to state a truth, that their souls watch me in wonder, their ears are tuned to listen for my voice and to absorb my words like a dessert soaks in water.  Their eyes gaze upon me at times mimicking my movements.  

Just last week I was eating cereal across from them and caught them looking out the window when I did, sinking their spoon into their Frosted Flakes when I did, and trying to keep up with the speed at which I inhale my food.  I wouldn’t have noticed if I didn’t see milk dripping off their chins and food hanging out of their mouths.  It was Josh’s gag reflex that tipped me off.  Once I figured out what was going on, I watched them as they watched me.  I would make odd motions to see if they would simulate my every movement…they would.  

We had some fun that morning when we both realized what was happening.

All that to say, it’s serious business raising sons.  It’s easy to think that their brains aren’t picking things up because they don’t even know how to pick up their own toys.  Or that things I do don’t add up to them just because they can’t put two and two together quite yet.  There is more going on than I often know, or care to acknowledge, to be more accurate.

“I want to be like you, dad.”  With every day, the stakes get higher and move to things much more consequential than tying a killer tie.  I mustn’t forget how critical my interaction with them really is especially when I’m tempted to believe it doesn’t much matter.