He's a little more in love with himself right now

And how could you blame him? 

I hesitate to use this term to refer to a 7-year old, but it really can't be helped: My kid's pretty bad-ass right here.

I mean...look at the weapons. WEAPONS! One that is a trident of the gods. In my first grader's hands. And the heel pushing back at the sky (or anyone taller than 4 feet). Pretty amazing.

The photos were taken weeks ago, the day of an in-studio tournament we negotiated on. His friends had already been to a competition way out in the suburbs and he wasn't interested in going. His confidence in Tae Kwon Do was waning and I just felt no need to pressure him. It was his choice, I told him. But then the school offered the chance for students to compete in a smaller tourney, one that would show younger kids what the big show is really like. His teachers encouraged him to participate, they told me how good it would be for him. And so I offered to take him, telling him if he chose to go, we could leave at any time. But maybe it would feel good just to try, just to be open.

On the mat, his nervousness melted away. His forms were steady. His face solemn. He scrambled about in the sparring. He was completely himself, both in the calm spirit and the crazy kicks. When he was awarded first place for forms in his age group and third place for sparring, his smile was full of pride but his eyes reflected a bit of surprise that he'd done that himself. I handed over my credit card freely to the photographer and Lil E chose those flames as the background for the most serious of his poses.

We texted a picture of the picture to my parents. From their sunny spot on the beach in Florida, they agreed. LOVE IT! Our hero!, they texted back. I held the phone out toward my own airbender and his chest puffed up. He nodded just enough for me to see. This morning, I wrote the words again on his lunch-time note, and the same look and little nod overcame him as he read the four words one more time. Please please please let him hold on to that feeling, I said to that fiery sky surrounding him in the studio snapshot.

Will he compete again? He says he doesn't know. Watching from the sidelines, I see that I don't care if he's good. I just want him to feel that good again. 

Today, however, he'll test with his class for the next belt. The purple one here with the slash of black down the center will probably be outdated in hours. But I'm quite sure this photo -- all 9 x 11 fiery inches that cost nearly as much as a pair of covetous shoes and is full of much more kickbootery -- will be displayed for a long, long time. And maybe he'll still feel those medals, even when they're not hanging on his neck, still move like a calm warrior when the tournament and the trident are mostly memory.

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Friday Shoegasm: Lil E analyzes $1,000 Pierre Hardy heels

I told him I loved the shoes. How could I not? There's a pop of pink and corridors of straps from toe to ankle and a platform heel that pushes up the calf until it's flexed.

Lil E is used to these comments. He makes them, too.

"Oh, Mommy, those shoes look so nice with that cape-thingy you're wearing," he's said, waving a headless Lego guy at my cardigan and Mary Janes. 

"Oh, Mommy, you should maybe wear those purple clicky boots again because you love purple so much that it's your second favorite color!"

"One second, Mommy. I need to go tell that lady in the store she has nice shoes on today."

So it goes. Until the hormones and video games cloud his cognizance of anything or anyone else around him, he listens when I go on about how my arches ache from wearing my new favorite heels or I squeal to put on a sundress when the first warm weather peeks out. He listens like I do when he details the scenes of the one Star Wars with Jar Jar Binks. We give those moments to each other, scot-free.

"I love those shoes!" I said tonight, pointing to the page of the Lucky magazine sprawled out next to the tub, pages wrinkled from bubbly bath water. "But they are ONE. THOUSAND. DOLLARS. Can you believe that?"

He stopped flossing his teeth and looked down at the page. 

"What number of money?" He wasn't astonished just yet. He was asking for clarification, and I was thinking about how he didn't say "monies" like he used to say.

"They cost $1,050," I told him matter-of-factly.

"They'rrrrrrre prettttyyyyy," he drew out long and with judgment. Here it came: "Buuuuuut, welllll...I could see maybe $50, maybe $100..."

He paused, leaning over the page, then abruptly stood up, tossed his floss in the trash and walked quickly to his room. More moments of silence.

"Yeah." He was sure now. "$100 or $50, maybe even $40 or maybe $90. But NOT $1,050."

"I agree." It's all I said. He had more.

"I mean, what if you are like, a teenager, say. And you have a job and get money. And what if you like, have a car accident and have to get your car fixed. And then you, like, need something really badly. And then, like, you have give your parents money, and other stuff. And you buy these shoes. RIGHT? Then you are left with LIKE NO MONEY. That is not good."

He seemed a little irritated to even consider this child-worker, heel-hording dramatic scenario. 

"But if you'd only spent $50 on them, you'd have a thousand dollars to put toward those other important costs..." I floated it. These are the times I pretend I am Suze Orman-ing this whole parenting thing.

"YEAH! You might even have some left."

He returned to his room, pulling pillows and stuffed animals from his bed to make room for his little Return of the Jedi jammie-clad body. He was thinking while he was working; the determination was all over him.

"It is NOT a good idea to buy shoes for $1,050. Even if they are cute or pink. No way." 

I smiled and agreed and assured him I never would.

Scootching in beside him with book in hand, I promised. "Even if one day I make millions of dollars, if I'm ever in a situation where I want to buy thousand-dollar shoes, I will think of your teacher and how many books she could buy for your class with that money. Maybe a hundred books? Or 200 even? Isn't that a better use of that much money."

"Yeah," he smiled. "Or you could buy those books for me." 

So it's a deal. Stretched out there, in my UGGhs with my barefooted boy spooned into me, reading an encyclopedia of disgusting body stuff, I thought, "Lil E and I, we really have this whole designer shoe thing totally figured out."

More style rules:

• The search for the perfect black boots never ends
• You need your roots done even more than you think
• Do not ever dress like a dinosaur

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Postcards from the past: 4 Februaries ago

I believe this was the first snowman he ever really helped me build. Birds and rabbits feasted on the vegetables only hours after we turned them into eyes, mouth, nose and hair. Lil E thought it was hilarious. It was snowy but not too cold, sunny but still crisp. We were living with my parents, already four months into an open-ended living arrangement that I couldn't map out when I packed up laundry baskets full of his little leggings and jeans and Pull-Ups and favorite stuffed animals. I have no idea what I took of my own,  just that most things made their way bag by bag to my parents' house that winter.

I was working hard, fighting hard, thinking hard. I was barely sleeping, and when I did, my dreams were full of anxiety. It was my first month of full-time employment in several years, and well into the many visits to the courtroom.Lil E was at his same old preschool co-op, but now the only child with two homes. He was safe and loved and nurtured there. But some of the teachers couldn't listen to the magnamity of the situation and other mothers said horrible, judgmental things to me for leaving, for getting by in crisis in the best way I could at the time.My parents were out of town that month and I shoveled and shoveled and shoveled their walks. I sweat underneath my down coat, cried tears of frustration in the bitter cold. I don't every detail of that February, but I can feel the emotion of that time well up even as I type where we lived and what we were doing. It was a sad and scary time. But there was a stillness in my heart that I remember vividly. I heard a voice from deep within that told me to keep on. Eventually everything would bloom.

It's why I love this photo and this face -- because it says, Look what we made together.

Sometimes I think back on those days and weeks and months...and hell, years...and I want to cry. Other times, something happens or someone appears in my life and all that trauma is triggered and I get all protective and worried and can't sleep. But most of the time, I look back on these photos, remember these moments and I think that it stopped being sad a long, long time ago. I think how happy I am to be right here. To be working from my desk in my own place. To see the snow fall outside and not worry whether we will have a chance to play in it or how much work it will make for me. To know that we have everything we need to get through, to build something up out of whatever we have at home, around us -- to make a statue of snow with arms outstretched and leaves reaching up to the uncharacteristic winter sun.

I look back on this February and I think how grateful I am that I cleared that path, that the little footsteps behind me are now running freely ahead.

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