The Boy on the Lookout

Oh the simplicity of being almost-seven.

On Friday night, we were at our local restaurant that has a balloon animal guy on Friday & Saturday nights. As we sat in our booth impatiently awaiting his arrival at OUR table (the boys, not me), The Boy asked me, "Mom...why don't you marry the balloon animal guy and make HIM my step dad?" I could see he was very pleased with this marvelous idea. I mean, come on. Unlimited balloon animals at your beck and call - day and night. Fabulous. Except for a few things: A) He's married and unlike for some people, that's a problem for me, B) He's totally nice but totally not my type and C) I won't be able to entertain the thought of another man (shudder) in my life for a couple of years probably. So I had to explain points A & C to The Boy - I didn't want to have a conversation of "what my type" was with my almost-seven year old. Especially when I've tried to hard to convince him that nothing should matter in making friends except whether the person is nice or not. And since he thinks getting married is just the mom & dad way of making friends, well, I just didn't have the energy to get into that.

So it's nice to know that The Boy is looking out for the next perfect man for me. However, I think his priorities for a step-dad and my priorities for a man-in-my-life will not quite meet initially. I told him that, for now, I'm going to concentrate on being the best mom I can be for him and Lil Bro. And that I wanted to work on being ok with being alone. And God has something in store for us and I'm perfectly happy to wait and see what that is (which is often not true - I'm very impatient and would kind of like a movie trailer of what's going to happen). I want The Boy to see that not having a husband isn't the end of me. I want him to see a strong mom whose priority is him and his brother. I want him to see that one of his parents thinks that ending a 16 year relationship deserves the proper respect of mourning and recovery. I want him to see that I'm not just cruising for the next hot man thing.

I love that The Boy is so open to the idea of a step-dad. I love that he's looking out for a "good man" for me. My mom and I had a good laugh when I got home and told her about The Boy's declaration in the restaurant. Thank goodness he didn't suggest it to the balloon animal guy while he was making The Boy's dinosaur on a leash!