Back into it

I am back at work after the April school holidays, and hence, back at the helm of Tofu-Hearted Mother.

My boy (13) wanted desperately to get his hair dyed.  He's been asking for a while now but, because I didn't allow my daughter to colour her hair until she was 14, I felt compelled to stick to the same rule.  But he's not the same person as her, and the circumstances are different.  He is tall and thin and has a thatch of shaggy blonde hair that he likes to grow as long as possible before he has breached the dress code of 'above the collar' at his school. He has a habit (a diagnosed compulsion actually) to flick his hair and was doing this up to 150 times or more a day a few months ago.  It was causing him so much hassle as he was targeted at school by the students, and teachers assumed he was 'too cool for school' and that the flicking was some kind of affectation.  It wasn't and isn't. He was beginning to count things and worry constantly about all sorts of problems that may or may not occur.

He's a good-looking boy - his hair had beautiful ash-blonde and darker streaks of all sorts of tones and his skin is reasonably clear for his age (and level of hormones!) and pale but soft.  When he asked to colour his hair I couldn't figure out why.  We had always brought him up to believe in himself and to like who he was and be proud of his differences and personal character.  He used to amaze us with his resilience to things and to people's attitudes.  If he was called 'gay', he would shrug and say, "I'm not, but it wouldn't matter if I was."  He used to choreograph his own hip-hop dances and performed them in front of his whole primary school.  He loved to draw and had a small obsession with Japanese animation and anything Asian.  He was a huge Doctor Who fan, Star Wars fan and loved all the usual Harry Potter stuff.  When he was a little boy (and as cute as a button) he loved to carry around his baby doll in the backpack we bought him for it; he would stop and feed the baby if we were on a walk.

After my husband's heart attack, things changed.  My son lost something of that resilience that he had previously.  He went into himself more and I couldn't get him to open up as much.  He seemed so 'together' when his father was in a coma and during the trauma of those first few hours, days and weeks of recovery.  I realised later that it was his own way of not adding to my worries - or his sister's. He told me, one awful night out on the grass when the medication was making my husband crazy, that he pretended he was was his favourite superhero (Rorschach from The Watchmen).  He said, if he felt that he was about to fall apart or cry, then he took a breath and asked himself, what would Rorschach do?  When I heard him tell me this, I realised that he was using that beautiful, resilient spirit of his to keep going.  It almost broke my tofu-heart when he told me this, but I understood him that little bit better than before.  And I had always felt a real closeness to my son as we seemed to be quite alike.  I used to pretend I was Clint Eastwood when I was a teenager.  Sounds crazy for a girl, but I grew up with two brothers.

Anyway, we not only let our boy dye his hair, but we relented to him getting his ear pierced as well.  I'm not sure what compels him, but I know it's a confusing and complex need to be both different and to fit in - if that makes sense.  No one said adolescence was easy and I remember my own only too well.  I try so hard to understand him and have compassion for his hormonal confusion.  We talked to him about his decisions and some of the decisions we had made as teenagers and how they defined us at the time.  He opened up at the dinner table a few nights ago and said that his role model is a hip-hop artist known as Hopsin.  He's not hugely famous but our son listens to his music when he is feeling anxious or angry or frustrated.  It helps to calm him down and do what needs to be done.

He said he listened to Hopsin's music recently when he needed to build up the courage to hit the older boy (16) who had been bullying him and harming his social life for over a year.  I had given him the go ahead to hit the kid after nothing else had worked and it seemed this situation would go on forever and my son would lose more and more of his confidence.  The morning of the incident at school, I saw him shrink down in the car seat when we drove passed this kid who was on the footpath.  I wanted to stop the car and get out myself and confront the shit, but, of course, I would do such a thing and so I drove on.  I did pull up at the curb before we got to the school, though, and said to my boy that, if he wanted to punch this kid (and I know he did because he had mentioned it before and we had always said, no no, violence doesn't achieve anything...) that I wouldn't be angry with him.  But, I said, you are going to have to think of every shitty thing he's done to you over the past year, remember every time he's yelled things at you or shown you up in front of his friends - and put every bit of that fury behind a punch that hurts him and that surprises him.

I would never have imagined that one day this tofu-hearted mother would be telling my beautiful, sweet-natured, gorgeous son, that I gave him permission to punch another human being.  But I did.

And he did.  Punch him, I mean.  The school was very supportive and only gave him a day's suspension.  I didn't punish him and we made sure that the situation didn't go any further.  The school finally took notice and we got the problem resolved.

But we were proud of him as he stood his ground against a much bigger 16 year-old and did what he had to do to survive and save face.  So, we let him dye his hair last week and we let him get his ear pierced.  He said he wanted to look like his role-model, Hopsin - who he told me is against drugs and alcohol and the disrespect of women.  I thought, well, there are certainly worse role-models in the world for my son. 

And best part?  The pharmacy was shut and the beauty parlours didn't do piercing - so I had to take him to the local tattoo parlour!!  He almost crapped himself when she said she was going to use a needle instead of a gun.  But he's really hard-core now (or so he thinks...)