Making Friends

As a parent, there may be almost nothing as agonizing as hoping your child will make friends. Theo has been in school for four days, and every day I ask him if he has made any friends. He is such a seemingly outgoing, confident boy. Other parents have told me of friends their children have already made. But every day I ask Theo and he says, no, no friends yet.
Last night I asked him if there was anyone he WANTED to be friends with. He said there were a few boys he didn't want to be friends with (I guess that's a start...) He said there were two boys he didn't like because they were always jumping up, and getting in front of him when the teacher was talking and he didn't like them very much. So then I asked again if there was anyone he wanted to be friends with. And he said yes. He said there were two boys in the green group (he is in the brown group). He said they are already best friends, and he likes them. I asked him how he knew they were best friends. He said because the day they had to sit in a circle and show their four favorite things (a color, a food, an animal and a game) the one boy helped the other one out. So he knew they were best friends. And he said he wants to be friends with them, too.
For some reason this broke my heart. He looked out, and saw a tiny moment of kindness between two boys--who knows if they are best friends or not -- and all he knew was THEY were the ones he wanted to be friends with.
My boy is sweet. And I guess I forget how gentle. He is so wild. Such a great climber, so confident athletically, and he felt like he ran the playground at Canyon School at the end. He was one of the toughest, fastest boys there. But Jonathan reminded me of how it had taken him a long time to make friends at Canyon. He reminded me that when I was still working, and Theo was at the co-op without us, every day he would come home with sand in his scalp. Until one day a mother approached Jonathan and said, I think you should know the big boys are dumping sand on Theo's head every day. I try to stop it, but you might want to know. Oh, I felt so helpless and so worried. I just kept imagining my sweet boy sitting under the playstructure alone as the big boys dumped buckets of sand on his head and he didn't complain or ever tell us. Now I feel those feelings again.
But he knows what he wants, and I love him for seeking kindess in a friend. Does anything else really matter?