Essence of Parenthood

My son Nate will be 6 years old a month from today. He's very interested in Superheroes, among other things.

For the last two weeks or so, Nate has been very hard at work, drawing sketches of superheroes in a large sketchpad. When Nate gets home in the afternoons or evenings, he goes to work on the sketchpad. In the mornings before school he spends time drawing between getting dressed and eating breakfast. On the weekends he likes to draw in the sketchpad. He confided in me that he wanted to present the finished project to Jessica for her birthday, and was upset when he hadn't finished it by her birthday this past Monday. We decided to celebrate the birthday on Friday so he could spend the rest of the week finishing everything.

He's using colored markers, and working every free moment on this project. The sketchpad is about the height and width of a typical newspaper (when folded in half with the fold running horizontal) - maybe a little larger than 1x1.5 feet. There is one superhero to a page. There is a page with Batman, against a dark, nighttime background. The page with The Flash shows him on a highway fading into the distance. Aquaman is drawn underwater. Etc.... Under each drawing, Nate has written the name of the superhero. Usually he can do this on his own, but occasionally he has asked Jess or I for help with the spellings.

The work is amazing. The drawings are better than I could ever do, and anyone that knows the superheroes could probably identify each character without having to ask who the character is.

I was so proud of the work that last weekend I set up a blog for Nate, and intended to scan the drawings in and put them on his blog so others could see the work. When I told Nate about this, he said he didn't want me to scan the works in and put them on the computer, because he didn't think they were good enough. This was very disappointing to me, as I wanted to show the drawings off, but I honored his request. I planned on scanning the drawings in to the PC anyway, in case Nate ever changed his mind, but had no intentions to put the drawings online. I didn't get around to it.

Then, Monday night he went with Jessica to Shoprite, and brought the sketchpad with him. The pad hasn't been seen since. We think it was left at the Shoprite, but we called there today and it hasn't been found. This evening I drove around the Shoprite parking lot to see if I'd see any trace of the sketchpad on the ground there.

After all the work Nate put in to this, and having seen what a good job he did, I feel horrible that the whole thing's lost. I can't believe how much I wish I could fix this for him.

When I was 3 years old, I left my favorite toy firetruck in a department store. I think it was called Gus Mayer. I never forgot about that, and this reminds me of that episode. I wonder if my parents still remember that, or if they felt the same way then that I do tonight.