And Zen What

Almost every day, Five draws a new picture for Seven. He pesters his teachers about whether he'll be allowed to pick her up from her classroom and help her to her bus. (They explain to him that the preschool has a very different schedule and bus, but Five always figures if he just asks often enough, we slow adults will eventually tumble to the right answer, which is to say, the one he wants to hear.)

The last week or so, he's been all about chopsticks. He even started wanting to take them to school. I was surprised, since school lunch tends to be stuff like, oh, grilled cheese sandwiches, which are not elegantly consumed using chopsticks. But since delicate and subtle interrogation ("Five, are you mad at anyone at school?") revealed that his chopstick intentions were pacific, I let him stick them in his backpack.

Then it dawned on me. He's practicing. He figures Seven will be using them when she first gets home, and he wants her to feel at home. He tells me every day about all the things he will teach her how to do, how he will make sure she doesn't fall down, how he will tell her not to be scared of things.

Now, I know that part of this is a desire--who doesn't have it?--to be the Big Man on Campus. But it's mostly sheer empathy. Seven, the idea of Seven's arrival that is, is triggering a flood of chivalry: he wants her to feel safe and warm and taken care of. He wants her to feel loved. As an "older" child at adoption, he remembers his life before he came home. As time goes on, he remembers fewer details, but he is absolutely clear about how he felt when he lived in his SWI. He was lonely at bedtime. During play time, he took refuge in the baby room from the roughing up he'd often get from the older kids. The babies liked him. They didn't care that his eyes looked funny, unlucky. He gave them piggy-back and horsey rides. He tickled them and made them smile.

Five found warmth and acceptance in the baby room, where he remembers Seven as the one with "my same kinda eye, Mom" and who didn't cry. He could help them, make them feel happy--and that made him feel happy, useful, loved.

Hence his master plan re: the chopsticks, I am convinced. His reasoning would be something like this: if she can eat only with chopsticks and everybody else at the table eats only with forks and spoons, she will feel like someone who doesn't belong. If I eat with chopsticks, she will know she belongs, because I am the big brother and so she will know it is ok.

Or, as he himself puts it, "I will tell her things, and she will believe me, Mom. She knows me."