“Are you happy?” my seven-year-old asks out of the blue, and it takes me by surprise. We are playing basketball on a Little Tikes hoop at my grandfather’s home. I feed him the ball to slam dunk, but a part of me is distant, and his question draws me back.
“What?” I ask, questioning if I heard him right.
“Are you happy?” he repeats.
How do I answer that? Yes…but I want to be at home. Yes…but I’d like a little time alone. Yes…but I’m looking ahead and don’t see a way to improve our standing in world without entering greater into a rat race I really don’t care to be in and will come at a cost to time with family and at home which, even now—as his question tells—I fail fully to enjoy.
“Are you happy?” His question repeats in my thoughts as I turn it over.
“I am,” I answer simply, no “but”s or saying what isn’t needed.
I am.
“Then don’t ruin mine…” he speaks response, telling just as simply.
They hit me in the gut, and I feel my stomach turn.
It is Father’s Day, and all he wants is time with me.
My thoughts were somewhere else, attention not with him, and maybe my answer to happiness was not as simple as I said. Of the first two, my son already knew. Maybe the third he also understands. But, even if not, God does; and there in living moment, my son becomes an instrument—eyes and words of a child—to engage my heart with simple question I, to self, was too afraid to ask.
He checks my heart and brings me back.
“Are you happy?”
I am.
I am so blessed. I know this, and even so, there are times mind drifts into directions that detract and dim from the joy of lived presence to moment and blessings we are gifted.
Sooner than I can imagine—if the stories of parents that precede bear true (and have no reason to believe different)—he will be grown. He will not care as much for time and little moments like these together. His priorities will change, so too will my role and place within his life.
His question brings me back to where, moment before, I know that I was not. Soon he will be grown. One day, these moments will be no more.
Returned, I love the moment while it is.
He dunks. I block his shots. I play like the 5’ 9 and 3/4” giant that I am in his 4’ world and 5’ hoop (I don’t like to pretend to be something that I am not, and 5’ 10” is one of these things—I am what I am).
I block his shots over a wood rail fence into horse pasture of my grandfather’s neighbor. Next possession, I let my son cross me over driving for a layup. He wants to win, but also to see and know that I am trying, and so our game becomes a dance of believability that leaves us both lifted and feeling better as we each attain something in our dance and aim: he, a win, and I—the happiness of which he asked.
It is all a blessing.
I try to always remember, but there are moments when I forget—or drift—but so often when I do, I am returned through eyes and words of a child.
“Are you happy?”
“I am,” and I do not keep it in.
“Thank you,” I tell my son. “Thank you for wanting to play with me.”
“You’re welcome,” he answers, smiling in the June, Sunday sun.
He returns me to a happiness—simple as spoken answer—and, true to request, preserve his own.
It is all a blessing. We are good for one another.
After words, we play on—living well and present our moment that is.