Riece and a bunch of his buddies met up recently and decided to bike through a cherry orchard. It was the peak of picking season and the orchard manager gave the boys full reign to pick as many cherries as they wanted. Apparently the trees were slotted for removal so a new subdivision could be built.
One of the boys wandered away from the group so Riece and his pack of goofy middle school friends decided to hide in the trees and wait for the other boy to return. Only the plan didn't work out so well for Riece. They all hid from him instead. And never came out. They left him in the orchard alone.
He decided to come home, get grocery bags and return to the orchard to pick more cherries. Which he did, multiple times. I came home from running errands to find bags of cherries all over the kitchen counter tops and cherry stains all over my son.
Riece explained how he planned to bag them in quart-sized baggies and sell them to people in our neighborhood. Which he did. He made over $80 in less than a few hours. He was delighted with himself and I was proud of his entrepreneurial thinking and hard work.
It wasn't until later that he told me about the game of hide-and-go-seek that went awry. I stood silently, not sure how to respond.
The mother bear in me was actually sad that he'd been abandoned by his friends without a word. I thought it was mean and I hurt for him. I remember the countless times I was abandoned by my friends on a school playground so they could play with someone cooler. Someone with better toys at home. Someone who wasn't as silly as me. So I wandered around by myself. A lot.
I began to doubt myself as a mother. What, as a mother, could I do to make him more likeable and not so easy to abandon? What could I say to ease his frustration? Did he have frustration? Did he realize he had been abandoned or was I simply making a big deal out of this? Did he need new antiperspirant?
If his friends had hurt him, he didn't say a word. But Riece won't. He just moves along in life. And instead of focusing on the fact that his best friends had left him, he decided to apply his energies towards a positive task. He worked hard at it and profited.
He is likeable. In fact, he's downright adorable. His silliness delights my heart and brings joy to so many others. In fact, he really has a great sense of humor. And he knows it. My issues of abandonment aren't his issues so I told the mother bear in me to go hibernate for a while.
And then I went to the store and bought him new antiperspirant.
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