Celebrations

It's pitch black. The tension is thick in the air. Silently, children creep, waiting to attack. Stealthily, I wind through the maze, my gun clutched to my side. I peek around corners trying to spot any of my pint-sized foes. Suddenly, the silence is broken. In a sing-song chant, my son begins his celebration mantra. "Uh-huh, that's right, oh yeah, I rule, that's right,uh-huh." It's my boy. We are playing laser tag, and he has clearly gotten someone out. As I stood there, in the dark labyrinth of the laser tag arena listening to my older son, I began to think about celebrations.
My boys are champion celebrators, particularly my older son. He's had more time to practice. My older boy's celebrations always take the same form: "uh-huh, that's right, oh yeah, I rule, that's right, uh-huh." They are so rote that one might think that they are executed without forethought, but that would be a disservice to my son's celebrating. He has made a key strategic decisions that influence his celebrating. First, and most importantly, my son has recognized that life can be hard with few reasons to celebrate. He has combatted this somber truth by stretching plausible 'reason-to-celebrate' moments. He celebrates to acknowledge obvious feats like scoring in soccer, making a basket in basketball, making a nice catch in football, getting a nice hit in baseball- athletic stuff. Celebrations (polite ones, hopefully) and athletics go hand-in-hand. Before sports, I am not sure what people celebrated. Killing a wooly mammoth, maybe. Or starting a fire. But now we do have sports, and this allows us all sorts of chances to celebrate. Of course, my son is no dummy and he has realized that life wouldn't be as fun if one had to wait all week to celebrate (athletic competitions in third grade are held once weekly, usually on the weekends). So, he has expanded his reason-to-celebrate definition to encompass a wide swath of daily life. "Hey dad," he said to me this morning with a smile, "already taken my shower. No problem." [Uh-huh, oh yeah, I rule....] "Hey dad. Like my Chelsea jersey? I look smooth, don't I?" [Uh-huh, oh yeah, I rule....] "Hey dad. Look at my plate. I ate all my peas. Clean plate, player" [Uh-huh, oh yeah, I rule....] "Hey daddy. Guess what I just did? Helped mommy make cookies. She said I'm her sou-chef." [Uh-huh, oh yeah, I rule....] Or "hey dad. Go check out the play room. It's been cleaned by the CLEANING MASTER." [Uh-huh, oh yeah, I rule....] All the above proclamations were made with a smiling face and eyes gleaming with pride. True celebrations. I like celebrating too so I can relate to my son. But he has an ability to weave a reason to celebrate out of seeming nothingness. A couple of weeks ago, I heard him during his piano practice. It was not an atypical piano practice, replete with my son's furious protestations of hating piano and my wife's patient (at first, anyway) reminders of the importance of practice. Even as my boy's playing began to sound more and more like the song he was attempting, his manner did not brighten. He seemed near tears, a happy place a long way off. Suddenly, as if the good sounding playing was only just reaching his ears, he was on his feet with a rhythmic twisting of the hips and a hand out-stretched. "Uh-huh, oh yeah, I rule, that's right, uh-huh, oh yeah," he triumphantly crowed. Impressive. Celebrations for a piano-practice well-done.
Typically, my younger son's celebrations take a different form. His celebrations are sillier and random. In the middle of soccer game (that he and I are losing to his brother), he might start blowing kisses to an imaginary audience: "to all my ladies," he intones, grinning. Or, we're about to read the bed-time story, and he, inexplicably, starts to shake his booty. "Shake your little-tail feathers," he says, his smiling face nodding to the (pretend) beat.
We just got back from a really beautiful trip to Arizona. There was a lot of amazing hiking there. Curiously enough, my youngest, although always the loudest, in protesting, "I DO NOT WANT TO HIKE" was a champion hiker. On a hike during our last day there, he and I were a good ten minutes ahead of the rest of our extended family. We marched resolutely through the gorgeous terrain. Red rocks marvelously towering above us, we marched on. I noticed that my son was muttering under his breath. I moved closer to listen. "Uh huh, oh yeah, I rule," he whispered, the pride coming off him in waves.