It’s funny watching your little child morph into a person of his own without any help from you. 

For instance, these days Huck enjoys dressing up occasionally, so much so that he requested we buy him a belt. Often on Fridays and Sundays he puts a lot of thought into dressing up, which includes the belt, his miniature man shoes and slightly too big pea coat. He likes to pose in positions and ask if I would consider it “fancy.”  Sometimes he works on accents and asks if he sounds fancy.  Coming from two slobs like me and Troy, I’m not entirely sure where he got this information.

Secondly, seemingly overnight Huck has adopted the phrase “OMG.”  It’s enough for me that he regularly uses “BFF” causally in conversation, but now it’s constantly “OMG.  I forgot to tell you something important.”  It’s always a straightforward statement with a period at the end.  And again, coming from two people who never, ever say or write LOL or OMG unless we’re trying to be funny, this is mysterious.

And lastly, when friends come over Huck wastes no time seating them on the couch and pulling our ottoman bench up close to them.  He sits on the bench, stares into their eyes and sings his latest jazz choir numbers.  His eyelids get droopy, his shoulders sway back and forth seductively, and the gaping hole in his mouth really, really stands out.  Troy and I don’t dare look at each other during this routine because it’s impossible not to start laughing in a really awful way for a young jazz singer.  And God bless our friends who somehow keep a perfectly natural face as they take in the aggressive performance.  I know Huck’s parents are both actors and performers, but in light of his shyness on so many other occasions this confident young singer is almost unrecognizable to us.  (Not to mention the fact that neither Troy nor I would ever sit that close to anyone and sing jazz standards with such intense eye contact.)

I guess it’s all those other little people he spends his weekdays with, giving him reasons to look fancy and talk in code and sing with such abandon.

But every now and then I realize he’s still affected by things his mother enjoys.  As January is coming to an end I’ve been talking about Black History Month, explaining that in February we celebrate African Americans like Dr. Martin Luther King and Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong.  Huck asked, “And do we celebrate the African American with the beautiful voice?  The one who everyone wants to narrate their movies?”  I smiled.  ”Yes, we celebrate Morgan Freeman, too.” He’s obviously remembering my delight over a recent Facebook post on this subject.

LOL!