TEN years old!!!

Chasbo has made it! Ten years old today!

He survived a horrendous delivery which almost did him in, stopping his heart and panicking his team of nurses and doctors. He survived the screaming weeks of infancy when I had visions of pelting him out of a window. He survived the dangerous toddler years when I watched him like a hawk and he still managed to drink engine oil, climb doors, stick things into sockets repeatedly because "why it do dat?" and get up at 4.30 every morning to channel-surf.

He survived our getting rid of that TV.

He has survived adventures in "real" surfing: bonks on the head with a big board, underwater immersion for minutes, and hammerhead shark interest (the only time I have ever seen Chas pale with fright!)

He still surfs.

Chas just placed FIRST IN CLASS in Creative Writing. But... He got a "C" in grammar. How is this even possible? "I dunno, that grammar test was SO DUMB! Boooring!"

For his birthday, Chas asked for a book with Leonardo Da Vinci's mechanical drawings. I also gave him a book on Einstein, and he read it all the way to school. He recently read Madeleine L'Engle's "A Wrinkle in Time", and he is very excited about the possibility of leaps in time and space. He keeps thinking that he has cracked "Perpetual Motion" as a source of infinite energy, but then he finds a flaw in his theory.

When I met Chasbo's new teacher, the young and pretty Miss Garcia, I thought "oh no. Chas is going to walk all over this one. We are in for a rough year!"

Well, Miss Garcia is very experienced, highly qualified and wonderful. She has kept Chas' nose to the grindstone, while giving him the space he needs. "Chas is the most high-energy child I have ever seen. I put him at the back of the class, where he can spread out, see?"

I hope that Chas continues to have teachers who understand him: the amazing Mrs. Scott, who taught him that school is not as bad as he thought; Miss Dookeran, who showed him how to survive a TEST and get Good Grades; Mrs Crowe, who allows him to interrupt her science class with excited add-ons; Mr. Assoon, who managed to get Chas to join the choir (how did he DO that?). Chas has had such good luck with his teachers, with very few so lousy that he had to resort to pencilcase-throwing tantrums and subsequent consequences.

I hope that Chas continues to be blessed by friends and family who love him: my Mum, who "bonded" with Chas as a baby and has been his close confidant and favorite person ever since; my dad, who is "there" for me as a babysitter when we go out at night! Sean's folks, who adore their first grandchild and would like to give him the world; his myriad aunties and uncles who love, guide and instruct him... And tolerate his moments of complete brain-freeze; his paediatrician, who said early on that any child who will sit absorbed in a book for an hour is clearly NOT ADHD; his buddies at school, who like him for his weird sense of humour and his wicked skateboarding skillz, and who phone him up for homework help even though he got a "C" in that subject... Chas patiently explains the concepts, gives examples, helps in spelling, and reads out the sentences, and then forgets to do the homework himself...

Chas gets more handsome, more BEAUTIFUL everyday. He has his Afghan Great Grandfather's multicoloured eyes. He is a warrior of justice: the only time he has been in trouble for fighting at school (that I know of), he beat up a bully bigger than himself who was picking on a kid smaller than Chas. Chas is so much like his dad in looks and ways, and Sean's cousins and friends comment on it all the time.

Chas was vegetarian until he was seven, and still has meat-free times. He would like to give meat up eventually, he says, when he is done growing. He feels that is wrong that an animal should be caged all its life, but he will catch, clean and eat a fish quite happily...

I am proud, excited, exasperated and in awe of my son. I wish him an action-packed next ten years (because that's what he would want) and all of the love, peace and friendship in the world (he needs it!) I love my Boyo. He is my first, my best, my special Chas.