One Day When He’s Famous

Every now and then I leave Willan with our babysitter and pick Grayson up from school so the two of us can have a little time alone together.  It’s usually only an hour, but it’s precious.  Grayson is a great kid who seems to get the raw end of my patience sometimes.  Mainly that’s because Willan – being two – takes up so much of my energy.  Anyway, not too long ago I made last-minute arrangements for Willan and stood outside Grayson’s school, waiting for the bell to ring.  When he saw me standing there alone, he knew it was time for just the two of us and his whole face lit up.  I crouched down to hug him and he knocked me right off my feet.  That alone was worth the hour of babysitting.

We drove to our favourite coffee shop and I bought him a hot chocolate.  He found us a table and started digging in his dinosaur backpack.  Before I was settled into my chair, he had shrugged off his winter coat, opened up his pencil case and notebook, and started to write.  The thing about hanging out with Grayson is that he doesn’t really feel the need to talk.  In fact, some of the best times we have are just sitting together writing or drawing.  Unless you’re telling stories or sharing a laugh, Grayson would rather disappear into the wilds of his own imagination, drawing up the storyboard for his next movie or writing a one-page newspaper to sell for an invisible dollar.  I am happy just to sip my tea and watch him work.

The main thing on his mind that afternoon was his band.  He had been talking about it for weeks – ever since our Thanksgiving visit to the Chapmans and their incredible music room.  He had already decided that he is going to play “big” guitar and he definitely wants to be a singer (if the gods are kind, he won’t be taking after me).  His band is called OYA because bands say “Oh yeah” a lot and that’s how you write “Oh yeah” when you are five and you don’t really like lower-case letters.

I overheard Grayson’s first song when we were driving one evening to pick Geoff up from work.  Lost in his own world (complete with disco-ball lighting and screaming fans) he was singing at the passing cars:

“I want to go in!  I want to go in!  Oh Yeah!  I want to go into the toy store….”

Ah, the angst of a five-year-old.  The song went on like this with heavy-metal ferocity until he hit the chorus:

“My Mommy won’t let me, but I want to go in!”

So I’ve already started worrying about his teenage years.

At the coffee shop that day, I drank my tea while Grayson ignored his hot chocolate, intent instead on getting all of his new lyrics down on paper.  This song featured a lot more Oh Yeahs and was again heavy on the angst and light on any spacing between words.  When he was done writing, he drew musical notes randomly around the page and a picture of himself in front of a microphone with an audience of heads, some even attached to rock hands.  He finally passed the page to me, I looked it over with all the seriousness I could muster, and then I told him how great it was.

Because it was, after all, really great.

I wrote across the bottom “these are Grayson’s first lyrics written at Caribou Coffee on …..” and the date.  I was going to take them home and tuck them away but he grabbed the paper back, wrote “COME TO MY SHOW” across it, and stood up.  He had just turned his lyrics into a flyer and he was looking for someone to hand it to.  He settled on Caleb – a young guy who works at the coffee shop.  Caleb was sitting on his own with his laptop open and his iPod plugged in.  I was about to protest – out of my own innate shyness and a selfish desire to hang onto those lyrics – but I kept my mouth shut and let him go.

So much of motherhood seems to be about learning when to keep my mouth shut.

Even though he had never met him before, Grayson walked straight up to Caleb and handed him that flyer.  Caleb grinned and asked Grayson what it was.  “My lyrics” was all I heard him say before he rushed back to our table, his cheeks a little red and his eyes alight.

I saw Caleb again just the other day.  He served me my usual tea and told me how happy he had been that Grayson had chosen him.  “Things like that are pretty special,” he said and he told me that he kept the lyrics tucked in the front of his notebook.

Imagine that.

Grayson’s faith in his own creativity and in the kindness of strangers is completely unshaken.  How I wish he would stay this way forever.  It makes me want to hide my boy’s heart away from what I know is going to come one day, from people who aren’t as kind as Caleb, and those who don’t have the good sense to know a special moment when they see it.

But for now, at least, I’m raising a rock star.