When He Looks at Me

I’ve noticed it for a few years now.

He’ll say something, or try out a joke, or make an observation about something we’re watching, and then he’ll look at me. Not a glance. A look. He holds it for a beat longer than most people would, waiting for something to come back.

I noticed it gradually, the way you notice most things about your kids. Not a single moment but a pattern that eventually became impossible to miss.

I tested it once or twice. Not in a mean way. There were moments where I could smile without making eye contact, could let the beat pass without responding, and I’d feel him still looking. Holding. Waiting. A few seconds longer than felt accidental.

I asked him about it once. Why do you do that?

He didn’t know. That’s true for a lot of things he does when you ask him why. The awareness required to answer that kind of question hasn’t fully arrived yet, and may take time, and may look different when it does.

So I’ve been left to wonder on my own.

Part of it is probably simple. He wants to see if he made me laugh. He wants to know what I think about what he just said. That’s not unusual for a teenager, or for anyone. We look at the people who matter to us to see how we’re landing.

But I carry my own history into everything I observe, and I can’t always separate what I’m seeing from what I’m afraid of seeing.

I was made to feel small. Not by one thing, but by enough things over enough years that I spent a long time wondering if I mattered. If I was visible. If anyone was actually registering that I was in the room. I know what it feels like to look for confirmation that you exist, and I know how much energy that takes, and I know what it costs over time.

When I see my son hold that look, I feel two things at once.

I want him to feel seen by me. That part is easy. I am always looking. I notice everything. He does not have to wonder whether I’m paying attention, whether his jokes land with me, whether I think what he said was interesting or funny or true. I am here. I see him.

But I also want more than that for him.

The world was not built for him. That’s something I’ve written about before and something I think about constantly. People with his needs are often invisible in the systems and spaces they move through. He has to work harder to be noticed, harder to be understood, harder to be taken at full value rather than reduced to what he struggles with.

He is so much more than what he struggles with.

He is kind and funny and specific and stubborn in the best way. He has opinions about hockey teams and strong feelings about Fortnite and he named our dog after a winning moment in a video game. He looks at his father to see if a joke landed, and when it does, the satisfaction on his face is complete.

I don’t want that looking to come from the same place mine did. I don’t want him scanning faces for proof that he’s real. I want him to know, without having to check, that he is seen.

Not for what he carries. For who he is.

Maybe that’s all he’s doing when he looks at me. Maybe he just wants to see me laugh. Maybe it’s nothing more than that, and I’m the one making it heavy.

I hope so.

But I keep looking back.

Where Are My Boys

Poodles have hair, not fur. Like most hair, it grows in a certain direction. Dogs generally like to be pet in the direction their coat grows, not against it.

My son didn’t notice for a long time.

When Emmet first came home, my son was eleven. Emmet is a service dog, trained specifically for children with epilepsy. He was a year and a half, already trained, already knowing his job. He knew how to lay across a person’s lap with his full weight, the way a weighted blanket settles. He knew “over” and “lap” and how to read a room. He was ready.

My son wasn’t sure what to do with him.

The petting was the first sign. He would reach for whatever part of Emmet happened to be closest and move his hand in a way that looked like petting without quite being it. He wasn’t feeling Emmet. He was mimicking the shape of what petting looks like. And he’d go against the grain without noticing, his hand moving in whatever direction felt natural rather than the direction Emmet’s hair ran.

They would be in the same space, close enough to touch. But there was something between them. An invisible distance that kept the contact from becoming connection.

Emmet is trained to comfort. His weight across your lap is supposed to mean something, to regulate, to settle. But when he’d do “over” and lay across my son, I don’t think my son felt it. The command worked. The dog complied. The comfort didn’t arrive.

We kept at it. We practiced in the kitchen, the three of us, Emmet running through his commands while my son learned to offer the right reward. A treat, and then his hand in the places Emmet actually likes. Under his chin. Along his neck. Near his ears. The top of his back.

And then one day Emmet leaned in.

My son was petting him the right way, in the right place, and Emmet pressed into his hand the way dogs do when they want more of something.

“See how he’s leaning in to you? That means he likes it.”

My son noticed. I could see him register it. The idea that the dog had a response, that something he was doing was causing something in return. It was a small thing. But it was the first time the contact went both ways.

Viktor joined the family a few years ago, ten weeks old and completely feral. My son helped name him. We asked for ideas and he said “Victory Royale,” the winning moment in Fortnite, which is how we landed on Viktor. The name fit. He has been chaos ever since.

He’d rocket into whatever room my son was in and be immediately in his face, all energy and no concept of personal space. My son didn’t know how to play with dogs yet, not really. He’d try to do what he’d seen me do, but the timing was off and Viktor was relentless. It was too much.

Viktor also, on more than one occasion, relieved himself on my son’s bed. This did not help.

But time passed. Viktor calmed down, somewhat. My son got older. And slowly, something started to change.

He started throwing the ball for Viktor. He learned that Emmet likes it when someone holds a nylabone while he chews, and he started doing that. Small things. Quiet things. Things I noticed without saying anything.

Then the dogs started showing up in his room. I’d go check on my goddaughter across the hall and hear him from his doorway, pleased about something. The dogs had migrated to his bed. He’d send me pictures from the couch, one or both of them pressed against him, settled, staying.

Now when he comes home, he wants what I get.

He comes through the door and looks around. “Where are my puppies? Where are my boys?”

The dogs come to me first. They usually do. But I redirect them, and eventually they split. One finds him, one stays with me. He bends down toward whichever one comes his way. He doesn’t get on the floor the way I do, not yet. But he bends. He reaches. He waits for them to come to him.

And they do.

It took four years. It didn’t look like bonding for most of them. It looked like proximity without connection, effort without payoff, a boy and a dog in the same room who hadn’t figured out what they were to each other yet.

But they got there.

The Tallest One

The tape measure at CVS didn’t start at zero.

I noticed it when the person measuring him announced a number that was clearly too high. He looked at me with the kind of satisfaction that doesn’t invite scrutiny, so I let it sit for a minute. But the tape was mounted too high on the wall, and the math was off, and eventually I had to say something.

We agreed to wait for an official measurement.

This was February of last year, ahead of a basketball physical. He was close. We both knew he was close. But close wasn’t the same as over, and the CVS number didn’t count.

A few weeks later, at CHOP for a follow-up, the nurse measured him the right way. He looked at me while she did the math. When she read the number back, he was under six feet. Just under, but under. He gave me a face. Not devastated, just pouty. The face of someone who had been robbed of something they were owed.

“I’m sorry, pal,” I said.

We kept tracking it. Every appointment, every person who checked us in got some version of the story whether they wanted it or not. The fractions kept moving. 5’11” became 5’11” and a half, and then more. Every measurement got reported back to me with the same energy a stock trader uses when the market moves in their direction.

Then, at an allergy appointment, the person checking us in measured him on the way in. She did the math. She read the number back.

Over six feet.

He looked at me. “Yeeeeessss, finally!”

She got the short version of the story whether she wanted it or not.

Later, when the allergy nurse came in — she knew us, knew we’d been tracking this — she asked how he was doing. He didn’t mention allergies.

“I’m finally taller than my dad,” he said. “I’m the tallest one in the family.”

I was genuinely happy for him. I was also aware that I would be hearing about this for the rest of my life.

I was right.

The Stanley Cup came first. His Avalanche beat my Lightning in 2022, 7-0, in a game we went to together. He brings it up with the consistency of someone running a scheduled maintenance check. It never gets old for him. It will never get old for him.

Then the height. Then the Fortnite digs. And then a few weeks ago, a new one arrived. He started calling me “my old man.” Probably picked it up from a video or a show, tried it out, saw me laugh, and filed it away as a working bit. Now it comes out regularly, deployed with the confidence of someone who has found a reliable tool and intends to use it.

He does this. He latches onto things that land and keeps going back to them, past the point where most people would move on. I recognize it. I was the same way as a kid, running a joke into the ground because I’d found something that worked and didn’t want to let it go. For me, eventually, necessity taught me to improvise. To read the room and shift. For him, finding something that works and holding onto it might be doing different work. Generating new material on the fly is its own kind of skill, and it doesn’t come easily for everyone.

So he keeps the inventory. The Stanley Cup. The height. The old man. The Fortnite digs.

My response, when he runs through the list, is always the same.

“You’re taller, better looking, and younger. I get it.”

He considers this.

“And better at Fortnite,” he adds.

He’s not wrong about most of it. And he knows I know that. That’s the part he likes best. Not just winning, but winning with my acknowledgment. The scoreboard only counts if the other person can see it.

I can see it.

He’s the tallest one in the family. He’ll remind me if I forget.

I don’t mind. He’s earned every inch of it.