muscrat love
sebastian has always had a liking for the ladies.
not in a jasper sort of way. jasper is my brother 30 years later, coy looks out of the corner of long lashes, smiles, adorable burbles of laughter, and come hither glances. a few weeks ago jasper made a pregnant friend of mine blush with the blatant looks he was sending her way. she was screaming with laughter as she watched jasper flirting with her, making him smile even more winningly and his eyes sparkle a little more magnetically.
back to seb. seb has been blessed to have annie and adam in our building. the three are within five months of each other. and even before annie started developing bewitching golden curls and calling him "sabbie", master caldwell thought miss annie was pretty great. sebastian, adam and annie are like siblings. they scream and fight and make up and laugh, they are so intense and familiar with each other. sebastian is by far the most intense of the three…it makes me ache to see him sometimes struggling to keep up with them, or when he comes up with a suggestion and says, "hey guys, follow me!" and they don’t…or when he wants to play with annie but she is having a special playdate with another friend. and he does stuff like that to them all the time as well.
we have a picture of sebastian and annie playing together taken when they were barely two years old. they are behind a bush and annie is smiling at the camera, and seb is looking at annie and grinning. his adoration is evident.
when kindy started, i sent him off to school knowing that all would be well. nemo had taken the school bus…so would sebastian. that was our mindwashing and he bought into it. good stuff.
a couple of weeks after school began, i took him to his trampolining class. adam was there as well. as seb waited his turn as we all stood around the trampoline, he kept whispering something, "ajoolee…ajooliee" and shooting little glances.
finally i asked the instructor, "what is this all about? what is an ajoolee?"
and another mother spoke up, "my daughter’s name is anjali. i think they are in the same class"
after the class i was putting on sebastian’s shoes, and he was sitting beside adam and anjali came and sat down with them. she and sebastian smiled at each other. adam started chatting, and anjali and seb stayed silent. he whispered her name a couple of times.
enter anjali. a gorgeous little girl with a froth of dark curls. very shy. very polite and lovely.
anjali quickly became a favourite with sebastian and adam, and was over at ours for playdates and birthdays. two years in school, and anjali is the girl he likes most. he knew it from the start.
(i don’t remember having those early crushes. i remember really liking bob, or was it gordon? from sesame street, but there was no marriage discussion)
i love watching seb’s puppy love encounters, and suffer a little when love leaves him crestfallen.
about three months ago, my mum and i took seb to his gymnastics class. we were getting to the end of the class, and seb was racing around the gym with a friend of his rajdeep. kids started walking in the door in preparation for the next class.
one of the girls, wearing a pale blue leotard, placed her bag next to me. just at that point, sebastian rounded the corner, and started saying, "mummy i want…" , and i never learned what. because as sebastian caught sight of this girl, he stopped in his tracks and went slack jawed.
he stared at her, taking in her curly long hair tied in bunches, her sweet face, and was unable to move. stood and stared. no smiling, no talking. no moving.
have some pride, man! i wanted to say, but was so fascinated, i couldn’t.
sebastian continued to observe. finally, the girl turned away from her friends and made eye contact with sebastian. he could have fainted, he could have turned and run away, but instead he just kept staring, and she smiled and continued her conversation with her friends.
and he kept staring, gob smacked. by now his teacher was calling, but it took him a few more seconds to compose himself before he could move his feet again.
i didn’t mention the girl and his obvious infatuation, nor did i want to. i didn’t want to make him feel silly, because it was something that was obviously really important to him.
re-reading this, it sounds stupid describing it, seb either comes off sounding like a moron who will be unlucky at love his entire life, or like a moonstruck dork. and that’s not it. the sight of this girl rendered him unable to move. when he does love, he will love amazingly. i think that is great.
and in the meantime, the other day anjali, annie, adam and sebastian were here for lunch. and the conversation came round to marriage, and apparently sebastian now has two wives. and an adam/husband?
how millenium
