The Little Man Who Never Let Me Down

To say I haven't had a man in my house or in my life in the past five years would be grossly incorrect, because my seven-year-old mini-man has shown me some solid spine well beyond his years. So far, he's not flaky, not inconsistent, not unreliable, and he's a little man of his word.

There's not a single teacher or parent who has met him who has told me a single bad thing about his nature. His preschool teachers told me that he could sense those who were slightly differently abled around him, and he would go out of his way to help them.

I remember watching this four-year-old take the stage as the narrator for his very first play. Instead of delivering his lines first, he dragged the little boy who wore the same costume as him up beside him, made sure he was standing alongside him, and then delivered his lines.

I probably dropped a single tear in that moment.

We've seen a world of pain and happiness together over the last five years, and I couldn't be more proud of the little boy he's growing up to be.

He senses sadness in me simply by watching my face. Of course, he's a tornado as well — jumping up and down door frames all day long, squishing and wasting bars of soap inside buckets of water, and getting up to a laundry list of similar monkey behaviour.

Even then, my boy is more of a man than a slew of inconsistent, flaky, unreliable "gems" I've met over the past three years.

Cheers to being Riaan's proud mumma, every single day for the rest of my life.