a boy of my own heart

Last night I realized, yet again, how much Drake is a mini version of me. There are days that this thought warms my heart and other days that it breaks it into pieces. We were watching the movie “Born Wild” about a boy who befriends a gorilla and becomes intent on setting her free in the wild. It was a great feel-good movie with a very tearful ending. After the movie was over Drake looked up at me and said, “Bet you can tell I really liked that movie by my eyes can’t you Mom?” Tears streamed down his cheeks as he looked up at me with his clear blue eyes. “Yes sweetheart…. I can tell.” He has inherited this trait from me. I cry during movies, EVERY episode of Grey’s Anatomy and even those sappy Hallmark commercials (they do me in every time). I cried when the boys started school, when Drake could not figure out how to ride a bike and when he got his first pair of glasses. I am as sensitive and romantic as they come, and now, so is he. I toy with whether this is a good thing or bad thing for him in this day in age. He is the most empathetic and sensitive person I have ever met. He can sense what others are feeling and is always trying to befriend and include the outcasts and loners on the playground. He has warmed the heart of every teacher he has had. Every year I hear how they will always remember him as “one of their favorites”. I know you are probably thinking… well this is every parents dream! What is wrong with you?? But the reality is, he is a boy. In middle school and high school I fear these traits will not serve him well. I fear he will be bullied, teased and put down. I fear those clear blue eyes will cloud over, his soft and caring heart will harden. Kids these days are mean, meaner then they were when I was in school. Or maybe, now that I am a parent I am more aware. I see how some of the boys in the neighborhood scoff at him because he isn’t as “athletic” as they are. He runs like Phoebe, from Friends, in Central Park, happy and carefree, like there is nothing better in the world at that moment. So far he has not noticed their looks, but I do. It takes everything in me to not shake those looks off their smug little faces. I also fear the day when he first falls in love because that also means his first heartbreak will soon follow. I know he will fall so hard and with such passion it will hurt. I know because he is me. I also know some day he will make a great husband, the best a girl could ask for. But the road to find that love will be long and hard, full of pain and heartbreak, for Drake as well as myself.