Am I Metal?

Mark told me something yesterday morning that deeply disturbed me. It added to the anxiety and concern that I already felt with respect to my younger children, but to my son Levi in particular.

Background: The first night of our Disneyland trip, we stayed overnight in Las Vegas. Once we arrived at our modest hotel and unloaded, the kids got in their swim suits and jumped in the pool. Mark was out there, poolside, with his new camera, taking some great pictures of the kids. He had only recently purchased the camera, to replace one that he had lost on our Corsica trip last fall.

Later that evening, we went over to The Strip to gape at the hotels and casinos we passed on our way to dinner, somewhere. Mark pulled into the Bellagio and we ended up in their cafe for dinner. When we went to pay the bill, there was a problem with our credit card (subsequently sorted out), so Mark got up to go get a different credit card from the truck. Aaron went with him. I tried to use the debit card, but it is not the Visa kind, so is not universally accepted. I finally got up and went to an ATM, got out some cash, came back to the table and paid the bill. Then Levi, Esther and I got up to meet Mark outside.

None of us realized until the following morning that Mark's camera bag had been left at the table. Calls were made. It wasn't in lost and found. No one had turned it in. It had been stolen. More calls to security at the Bellagio and to the Las Vegas police department to file reports. Finally, a little later than planned and upset by the experience, we headed on to Disneyland.

We tried to assure the children that everything was fine. That yes, someone had stolen the bag and the camera, and yes that wasn't a nice thing to do; but life goes on. We were particularly sensitive because I had recently been discovering the extent to which the little kids have been exposed to adult problems over at the other house. Financial worries. Stress. Anxiety. Contention. They had, unbeknownst to me, been experiencing things to which no child should be exposed. Boundaries had been not only crossed, but erased.

Fast forward to last Sunday night. The kids had gone down to the local Lutheran churchyard to play, and Annie - so I found out later - had found a necklace that she brought home. Levi had been deeply concerned that Annie had stolen it and said as much to Mark. Then Levi brought up the subject of the stolen camera and how that was bad and the person(s) who stole it had done a very bad thing.

Mark again tried to ease Levi's anxieties by saying to him, "It's okay, Levi. It was just pieces of metal and glass and plastic. It's not really important."

A few moments passed. Mark went to take the garbage out, and as he passed Levi who was sitting on the front porch, he looked up at Mark and said, "Am I metal?" Mark said he had been so taken aback by Levi's comment, so deeply saddened, that all he could do at the time was say, "No, Levi, of course you're not metal." 

I did not hear about this until the following morning. When I heard this story, I too was deeply saddened, for this comment seemed to indicate a vast pool of "stuff" inside Levi, a product of his repeated and prolonged exposure to adult problems that he shouldn't have been exposed to. 

But what does it mean? "Am I metal?" Does he think he's not important? That's he's something that could be easily walked away from? That if he was lost or stolen, no one would care? What?

Whatever it means, it reveals a vast lake of sadness within Levi. It also added tremendously to my anxiety for him and, once again, deeply saddened me that things are the way they are. Divorce sucks, but things haven't needed to be the way they have been. They don't need to be the way they are. And so I am left pondering what I can and will do about it.

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Note: Mark subsequently left the following comment, and I'm incorporating it here because I want to make sure people see it:

"We have a notion that our sense of self is related to thoughts, emotions, and physical things. Witness children who at a very young age will put up a huge fuss and scream when an insignificant toy or object is taken from them. It is so distressing because the object has become their sense of self which of course is not the case. We teach this to our children by example as adults.  

"Levi expected that I should have been outraged and vehemently chastise and curse the thief which I didn't do. I told Levi that it was just my camera. A piece of metal, nothing to get upset about. What saddened me when he later asked me if he was metal was his presumed thought being that he too may not valued and could as easily be thought of as insignificant and discarded or abandoned. Was this just a contemplation he had or is he truly fearful of this happening to him. We suspect the later may be the case. 

"Interestingly, what I thought I was doing was teaching him about the insignificance of material possession and it backfired. What I took away is that we as parents can and do try and posses our children and make them a part of our sense of self and in so doing continue the pattern of insecurity when there is a threat of abandonment."