Any good intentions I had regarding my photo project were completely derailed when I came across this picture:
This is a picture of my daughter wearing her brother's Superman jacket. This picture was taken in August of last year. Therefore, this picture is also a testimony that I am sometimes a freakishly paranoid mom. I think the wind might have been blowing. Hence, the jacket. And the hood. She's wearing his because she didn't seem to have anything that fit her. Duh, it's summer. No one wears a hood in summer.
I digress.
This picture changed my creative output from grudging photo project to overly-sentimentalized blog (fair warning!) in about 2 seconds, all because of the jacket.
This jacket has a long history in my son's relatively short lifetime. At least it feels like it does. He received the jacket in February of 2015, and wore it practically non-stop for days.
Here's one of the first photos of my son in his jacket:
In this picture he is doing his favorite thing in the world-playing outside and "helping" his dad work in the woods. Our previous home had a deep lot with an area of woods that my husband had cleared for a fire pit, as well as woods that weren't so tamed. My son loved all of it. Zip up his jacket, slide on his boots, arm him with a shovel, and he was ready for anything. For hours.
Naturally, the jacket elicited a lot of admiration and comments from the general public. Our son wasn't a huge fan of the attention. He just loved the jacket. But who can resist a cute little 4 year-old boy in superhero apparel? Apparently, not many people. So, he lived with the celebrity that came wrapped up in that bright red cape. It gave him a chance to develop his people skills, if nothing else.
My son and the jacket became pretty inseparable objects. He wanted to go play outside? On with the jacket. Target or Kroger run? Jacket. Cold in the house? Jacket. With the hood up. That kept up through all the cold months of early 2015, took a hiatus during the warm months (except for that windy day in August when his sister borrowed it for about a minute), then resumed as soon as cooler temperatures hit last fall.
And then one day, something happened.
No, the cape didn't rip, the zipper didn't break, the large "S" didn't begin to flake off. Nope. One day, suddenly, the jacket was too short. Not so short that it wouldn't make do in most situations (see those above which don't require leaving our property), but short enough that it was time to trade up to a bigger size. I discussed it with my son, then went shopping with his dad, and found.....absolutely not what I was looking for, AT ALL. I wanted that jacket, just one size bigger (wisdom says: buy two next time). Apparently February is a great time to clearance outerwear, which means I was left with one measly option. It works, in that it is the right size, and comes in colors that my son likes and I don't take issue with, but it just isn't magical. Not in the least. There's no cape. No charisma. The replacement jacket is gray with color blocking of darker gray and just a little bit of orange for crying out loud. It's like the jacket is scared of being seen in public and wants to blend in with the sidewalk.
My son doesn't blend in. Anywhere. He lives life loud, and fast, and chatty, and chatty, and more chatty. So I think he should have a jacket that reflects how fun and free-spirited and amazing he is.
This is ridiculous. I know.
And it's really not about the jacket. It's about the fact that my boy is now 5, and school is much closer on my horizon than it has ever been before. As in, looming. Ominously. And I am realizing that this precious time of his life is about to go the way of the Superman jacket. It's not going to fit any more. The way we've lived life up to this point is going to change and it will never, ever be the same. And when I type that, and when I think that, it feels like my heart is a piece of paper that someone just wadded up in their hand. Crushed.
Couldn't he stay 4 forever? Why can't the jacket fit just a little bit longer?
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