This guy turns 10 today.
Our Ute Muster baby who has this appropriately inappropriate story about his 3-week-early arrival that includes the Ute Muster, Powderfinger, and his Dad driving me into the hospital clearly intoxicated after spending a whole weekend in the Bundy Bar with his mates.
He has and always will be, my Little Man.
Right from that first time I saw him and they placed him on my chest and I called him that as the first words I spoke to him.
We often joked that he and Pete were the only things keeping the oestrogen in control in our house.
But it was true. They were a team. An all-male alliance in the house they shared with 4 other females.
He is lost without his Dad. He often gets upset at the fact he doesn’t know how to be a boy in our house without his Dad. That people have told him well-meaning but totally destructive things like he’s the man of the house now, and he’s got to be the man for me. And he doesnt know how or what that means.
He does not.
He is, and always will be, my Little Man, and I have told him that I have very strong shoulders and I will carry the weight of the family. And even when he is not a little Little Man any more, I will carry it some more.
Because it is not his job to replace Pete.
He needs to play hockey and cricket and footy and love doing ballet. To cry and get angry and frustrated. To care and love and be tender. As himself. And only himself.
Then, for the man things he needs to learn, I can outsource.
The benefit of our wide friendship group is that I have a man for every job that Sam will need one for.
We chose godparents not on their capacity to religiously guide our children, but on their ability to fill the void of knowledge about us as people should anything happen to us.
And so those godfathers have already begun their roles none actually wanted to fulfil in reality. The one where they teach Sam to drink rum like his Dad did (lots of ice, Coke’s just there for colouring) will come in future years.
But the Dads of his friends have already offered to fill other voids Pete left in Sam (and the girls’ lives) - building, plumbing, mechanics, cricket, hockey, fishing, shooting, sheep, driving ... the rules of rugby union (I might sneak along to those lessons - I still have no idea!!).
Pete was so proud of his family, and oh my goodness he loved his girls, but when we had a boy, it was just that little bit different.
He was Pete’s Buster, Buster Brown, Mr Brown.
And none of us are allowed to call him those names since Pete died. They are his ‘Daddy names’.
So today, my Sambo/Samboso, turns 10.
What a decade it’s been learning how different boys are to girls and - even more now than before - how important it is to let them just be themselves.
May you continue to be so fiercely loving of us and your precious things, caring of your friends, passionate about your loves and endeavours (even that barracking for Carlton and desire for running... for fun), and being a clever funny good person.
Happy Birthday My Little Man.
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