Too Little

Max, my five-year-old son, stands before me with a pink face and wet eyes. His blond hair, badly in need of a haircut, stands up off his forehead in all directions, and his mouth trembles in an already-lost war against crying.

"I'm just a baby!" he shouts at me.

The words of my grandmother: You look so beautiful when you cry, float through my memory, and I'm struck by how clearly I hear them. How often she must have said it to me that I remember it so well. But on the other hand, I'm not surprised at all.

I understand this moment, Max's anguish. I know it well. When I was five, my brother and sister seemingly threw me away in favor of friends their own age. I was left behind.

On a week off from school, my bigger boys fill our house with friends and Nerf wars and Dungeons and Dragons and, it must be said, an inhalation of food like I never imagined. And do they want a "baby" trailing after them, needing supervision and admonitions and ruining the fun?

It's a rhetorical question.

This is a part of life. It's a part of the role assigned: Youngest. Baby in the family. Littlest. Kid brother. We don't ask for birth order, or siblings, or any of the things that are packaged up for us before we're born. Like those brown bags of school supplies for less fortunate children thrown together at big chain stores in September. Do we even know if we've compiled what they need? Or want? "Yes, of course I'll donate," is what I always say at the check-out line, and then off I go on my merry way, satisfied that I've done my part, helped someone out. In that moment, I'm almost as thoughtless as Joey and Noah are now: focused only on their own moment, all the while rejecting Max.

"Get him out!" 

"Mo-om! He's ruining the game."

"Come ON. He's too little."

I have no doubt in my mind that all of these statements are true and fair. But I have this boy--this boy who absolutely looks beautiful as he cries, emotionally tortured--standing in front of me. This is humiliation and embarrassment and hurt in the most basic form. It's rejection. It's my own children, asking me to choose between them, essentially.

I remember my own mom, kneeling down in front of me, the expression on her face something between pity and trying not to laugh.

Max's huge eyes, wounded and accusing as he yells at me, "Stop laughing!"

My mom saying with offensive false cheer, "Hang out with me! I'll be your friend!"

The disdain in Max's glare.

The truth is, when you are the youngest, there's nothing in the world that matters more than being accepted--nay--wanted by your older siblings. There will never be anyone cooler, or more interesting, or more fun.

And as a mom, nothing will break your heart, or make you laugh, like your littlest little one feeling that pain.