my boy

There are currenty six boys in my backyard.
Only one of them is mine. They are playing football, a game my son, at such a tender age, doesn't know how to play. He is standing in the middle of the group of kids -- all older than him, some much older -- with his hands waving in the air, desperate to be included as the other boys pass and throw around him.
I want to go out there and tell them to let everyone play. I want to stand on the deck, making sure those older neighborhood roughians whom I have never seen before know my boy isn't one to be triffled with.
But I know better. Instead, I stand anxiously at the window. Occastionally pacing back and forth, stopping myself from being the overprotective mother of a preschooler to the watchful eye of a first-grader.