Torn Pages

I gave Ethan a journal about a year ago.  Just a simple spiral bound notebook to get him in the habit of writing down his thoughts. 

While we were in Texas he wrote in it everyday.  He would write and become completely engrossed.  His tongue would slide out of the corner of his mouth in concentration, he would complain that his little hand was achy but still he kept writing.  Sometimes he read to me what he had written.   His phonetic spelling, which was illegible to me but was perfectly logical to him, made it necessary for him to translate.  He read pages and pages of his six-year-old-feelings to me.  When he grew tired of writing he resorted to drawing.

His drawings were detailed pictures of himself and our family.  They were simple and beautifully transparent.  When he was angry with his brother his pictures were a reflection of that emotion, when he was sad you could see that in his drawings too.

I walked into my room two nights ago, across my beige carpet the white pages of his journal were scattered haphazardly.  I knelt down and hurriedly scooped the torn pages into a neat pile. 

"What happened to these?" I questioned Kedar.

"Oh, Ethan tore them out.  He decided he didn't want them in his journal anymore."

As I knelt there on the floor, I think I felt my heart break a little.

I hated seeing those pages torn so carelessly from their simple time capsule.  I scanned through each page slowly and wondered why this was making me upset.  Why didn't he want them anymore?  The answer to this one question was at the root of how I was feeling.  Was Ethan's seven-year-old-self judging his abilities from a year ago?  Did he think that his best effort from then wasn't any good now?  Didn't he see the value in them and the feelings they reflected anymore? 

What I saw clearly, as I looked at the mess on my bedroom floor, is that my little boy is growing up and that's a hard reality for this mom to face.  For one reason or another those pages aren't important to him anymore.  So, instead of throwing that pile of torn papers into the garbage I tucked them safely away because even if he's ready to let them go, I'm not.