My Shadow

The other day I was outside working on my car when my wife pulled in the driveway and my son ran from the car and past me into the house.  It wasn't long before he came back out and brought out some toys and tried to play with me while I leaned over the engine with both hands squeezed between the exhaust manifold and the thermostat.  I had to explain to him that I couldn't play because my hands were busy working on the car.  So, he asked if he could get in the car, and he played in the car while I worked on it.

It was the same week when I was looking up something on the internet and he brought his toys into the room to play with me, and cleverly turned a 9 foot long piece of plastic (the remains of a piece of Pergo floor trim), and attempted to feed it to me as if it were a gigantic spaghetti noodle that I had to slurp up.  I cooperated this time, sliding the pretend spaghetti along the side of my mouth as I slurped for nearly two minutes, and ended it with gasp for air and a stomach ache.  He wanted this act to be repeated several more times until he took his turn.

And so yesterday I thought I saw a moment to spend alone as I went to my bedroom for a moment as he watched a cartoon on TV, and I turned on the news and tried to have a quick bite to eat.  Then he ran into the room and exclaimed the usual, "I took your spot!" and suddenly didn't care about cartoons anymore.

There have been times when he just follows me from room to room to see if I will ever stop walking from room to room.  If I stop, he'd find a game to play, or perhaps just jump on top of me and call that a game.  If I keep going, he'll just call that a game and keep following.

I've tried going in my bedroom and locking the door, but that just leads to banging on the door, which leads to begging, and then rolling on the floor crying, and a complete emotional breakdown by the child on the other side, which means the door must open, which means he will immediately stop crying and come in.

"This is the problem", as my shadow likes to say.  But I know it's also very much not a problem.  If I ever lost the shadow I'd have to spend any free time I'd earn trying to figure out where it went.  I guess the worse problem would be not having a shadow.  I'd feel like a part of me were missing.  But even worse, this shadow chooses to do what I do and to be where I am.  It is not a part of me, but I feel the separation as it sleeps in the next room.  And when I wake in the morning I will wonder where it is until it finds me once again.

He is my shadow, and when he isn't, I become his.