At the time I felt vaguely offended by her eagerness to disassociate from me. But now that I'm a parent, I understand that instinct: Believe me, it seems to say to the people around you, I find my child as baffling as you do.
My co-worker, with whom I share all my best Eli stories, has lately been insisting that Eli is more like me than I think. Last week, I told her that when Eli was home with the flu, at one point he called me in my office and, when I answered, just started chanting his own name over the phone. "It's Eli! Eli! Eli!"
She and I sat next to each other during a training session during which we practiced creating demo content for our website. I gave mine a headline: "Rachel rules." Then I created a card grid: "Here are the reasons Rachel is so awesome."
She looked over at my screen and raised her eyebrows. "Eli! Eli! Eli!" she mouthed.
I still maintain that Eli's personality is unique. But lately I've beginning to see that we're similar in ways that manifest differently.
This weekend, we went to a "silent disco party" for kids (they give you headphones to wear that you can tune to one of three different channels to hear music). There were a lot of kids in a small space and just a few party props, like emoji balls, which naturally led to a lot of play battles.
Eli made it his mission to collect both the emoji balls. After running himself ragged all over the room, he emerged raising both balls in triumph only to catch the eye of a small toddler gaping at him with an unmistakable desire for his prize. After a moment's hesitation, Eli passed one ball to the boy, only to have a bigger kid dart through them, grab the ball and take off.
The little boy burst into tears. Eli did a double take: from the crying boy to the one ball left in his hand and then back again. Then, as if in slow motion, he presented him with the ball. He walked heavily back over to me and sighed the deep sigh of a little kid who's just acted like a mature one.
"I didn't want the baby to be sad," he said.
It was a shining triumph of motherhood for me, and I almost welled up with pride: My baby was growing up to be kind and empathetic and generous, all the things I'd always wanted him to be.
But then, as I watched, Eli decided he had a new mission: Protect the baby and his ball. Justice for the baby! He threw his arms out to form a protective barrier around the baby. He dedicated himself to chasing down any kid in the room who wasn't sharing appropriately and got in their faces, explaining at top volume how they should be playing.
We both would have felt sad for the baby. We both would have handed over our balls to the baby. We might have both even done a little yelling over the issue. But only Eli would have turned it into a conflict and a personal crusade.
"You have a strong sense of justice," I told him. "You want everyone to do what you think is right. But sometimes you don't get to be the one that decides how everyone else behaves."
Yesterday morning, Eli asked if we could take him to get a haircut because he had one longer tuft of hair in the front that was bothering him (and he's recently become obsessed with "styling" his hair so it looks "handsome"). I said I could trim that hair for him. Then I went to get to the garbage and when I returned, Eli had vanished and the hallway was silent.
Because Eli was in the bathroom, on a stool, looking in the mirror and trimming his own hair with scissors.
(Side note: When I said, "WE DO NOT CUT OUR OWN HAIR!" he replied, "Well, now I wish I had a time machine so I could go back and tell past Eli that," which, in retrospect, is pretty funny.)
"You're like me," I told him after I finished my lecture. "When you have a problem, you want to fix it right away. You don't want to wait. And you want to do it yourself."
It's like there's some of me in there, but supersized: what I would act like if I were 6 years old and brimming with life. (Alternatively, what I might act like if I were 6 years old and gave no fucks.)
It's comforting to recognize these reflections of my own personality in Eli, because it gives me hope that some of the values I try to instill in him might be making a subconscious impression after all.
Every day, when I drop Eli off at school, I say hopefully, "Have a great day! Be kind to your friends and make good choices!" while he rockets off toward the door. Last week, when I dropped him off, he motioned for me to bend down, gave me a kiss on the cheek and beamed up at me.
"I'll be nice and kind and I'll make good choices," he said.
May that go for both of us in the new year.
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