A magical five-year-old mind

A magical five-year-old mind

My Chicky monster woke up and smiled. I had slept in his bed with him so I could see him first on his fifth birthday.

“Happy birthday, my big boy,” I cuddled and kissed him. He wriggled and grinned and Dawn, dragging a still asleep Beau into the room, wished our littlest man a big boy birthday.

The lounge room was floating with helium balloons and silvery strings, presents in a little mound which Chick ripped straight into.

“Daddy, now I’m five, you can’t call me Chicky any more,” he said. The words were like stakes through my heart.

“Oh — but I’ve always called you that. My my, we are a big boy now,” I consoled myself.

Chicky wanted a Yoshi cake so, like we did for Beau a year ago, my neighbour Bill and I donned aprons and whizzed together chocolate cakes to produce a wobbly drawn but very much loved Yoshi cake.

“That’s not Yoshi, Dad,” Chick, upon inspection of the cake, declared.

He had changed his mind about which cake he’d wanted several times. Not a trait dissimilar to moi.

At the stroke of noon, 34 pint-sized humans descended on the house, which, if it wasn’t raining, would have been fine. Swinging off lounges, chairs, tangled in balloon strings while balloons popped, lolly highs and sugar lows until the magician arrived.

Chick sat back from Magic Sam and eyed him and his tricks curiously. Being slightly introverted he declined offers to assist with tricks with a firm shake of his head.

He moved over from the kids and sat with Dawn and then me, finally deciding to leave the spectacle of the show to pursue the comfort of fairy bread in the kitchen.

When the party was over and his Ma and Poppy kissed him on the forehead and tucked him into bed, I said to him, “Perhaps sometimes I can still call you Chicky?”

He whispered, “Yes, Daddy, but only you.”

My little man seems all grown up now. I know every parent says this, but his intelligence is fiercely tuned. He’s made little decisions in his mind about what suits him now he’s five and what doesn’t.

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