A Closer Look

In the afternoon haze, Bug and I walk the dog up the cul-de-sac.  He runs, squealing over the blacktop as Fenway lopes along behind. Suddenly, Bug stops, breathing hard.

“Do you want to touch the ivy, Mommy?”  I look where he is pointing. A froth spills over the top of the neighbor’s fence, the bubbling green corsage of delicate, airy leaves.

“How did you know it was ivy?” I ask.

He shrugs. “It just looks like it.” I consider this. This is unlike any I’ve seen before. It lacks that oiled, thick appearance and the deep green of forests. This is something with almost triangular leaves dancing on a light breeze.

“Can we touch it together?” I ask. We approach, each reaching to stroke a thin, veined tissue.  

“Oh!” I pull back. “It bit my finger!” Now the dog is interested, too, snuffling closer. Only now do I notice that all the leaves are facing outward, their limbs covered in a clever disguise. No one would have known if Mata Hari had smuggled knives in her skirts. With more care, we lift the demure chin of one leaf. Tiny thorns prickle along the spines and down the stems.

“Now, why would this ivy plant have prickers on it?”

“To hurt you?” Bug guesses.

“Maybe. A plant’s job is to grow and survive. I guess hurting me might keep me from picking it. How else might those thorns help a plant grow?”

“Hmm.” Bug puts his finger to his chin and squints his eyes in the perfect caricature of a professor. The dog still pants at the end of her leash.

After a moment, I ask, “How does ivy grow? How is it different from something that doesn’t have prickers, like that grass over there?”

“It climbs!” he says. His eyes are wide open. “Maybe the prickers help it hold onto the fence so it can climb up!”

“That sure could be it,” I say. We look together at the buds fuzzing to life with tiny leaves unfurling from their marrow.

Later, at home, we have brushes and big paper and watercolors spread out in the living room. “I am painting grass, and here is the water in the grass. Here is the rain coming down from the sky.” Bug narrates his strokes, painting brown soil down under the grass and broad blue swirls in the sky. He begins making an eerie whistling noise. “The wind is blowing all around, blowing the raindrops.”

Over in the corner of the page, I swipe my green and brown lines, tiny and careful things. I paint quietly, waiting for the image to reveal itself.

“What’s that, Mommy?”

“What does it look like?”

Bug pauses, his brush poised above the page, and gazes at my corner for a minute. At first he shrugs, looks away, then looks back. “It’s ivy!” He says, a grin brightening his face. “And a fence!”

“How could you tell?” I ask.

“I don’t know. It just looks like it.” His attention is back on his own painting. And then it is elsewhere altogether and we are putting the paints away, rinsing out our brushes.

When we walk the dog the next morning, Bug sees the spilling life at the fence again. “Let’s look at the ivy again and go home and paint it!” he says.

“That’s a great idea,” I say. “While we’re out here, let’s see what other plants we can find.”

We traipse through the grass, dew clinging like kisses to our sneakers. From the brush explodes a flowering mystery. Ghostly blossoms extend purple-gray hairs 360 degrees from cotton spindles.

“Do you want to touch it?” Bug asks.

“Let’s touch it together,” I say. We approach the furred wonder as its damp fibers reach out to greet us.

Transportation

Room to expand. This is all we want. A seat by the window, a stretch of wall, three cool inches for a grip on the metal bar. Below, massive concrete rings squat in an oily trench below the Beltway-I66 interchange. Something is always being built here. This city is forever becoming.

As a child, I rode the orange line from New Carrollton into the city with my family on holiday weekends. Always, we were headed to the museums. The Burghers of Calais huddled in the Hirshhorn sculpture garden in hushed anticipation of our curious stares. Eager rivers poured from the pyramids into the National Gallery’s underground fountain.  Calder’s airborne iron waited around every corner. We rode the clacking train over miles of tired tracks. My father played word games with us. My mother brought books.

The train is the same as it was then. I am back after so long away, gazing at the same directional obelisks. I do not even need to read them now; the flat capillaries of the system map are etched into the navigational center of my brain. My feet cruise over the same hexagonal tiles. Perched atop stained, orange vinyl, I rock to the same rhythm that carried me into my young adulthood here.

Except that it is not the same train. Someone sold those cars for scrap, gutted them for replacement parts. Workers who were not even born when I was first riding have ripped up every foot of track and laid down new steel. Acts of Congress have added stations and endless streams of syllables to the names. Everything – from the ping of the door announcement to the color of the signal lights to the pass I use to move through the turnstile – is new. Not a single thing remains, yet I am still riding the an unchanging, brown-and-orange metro.

I am the same little girl, but you would never know it. Shed and replaced several times over, even the cells of my skeletal scaffolding have been made anew. What remains but the idea of the thing? The pieces bow and rust. We rivet flashing and deepen foundations. We age by necessity. We improve by intention. Each of us, like the city itself, is forever reborn. Somehow, we are meeting here all over again, beating traffic, riding home.

Bibliophile

At night, we stretch out on the bed for one of the few enduring rituals. Three books, three songs. For nearly five years, we have followed this same map to creep our way into night’s inner sanctum. Daddy’s house may have its own traditions now; I do not ask. For us, no matter the time zone in which we lay our heads, this is what Bug and Mommy do before bed.

Last night, we had finished up the first two picture books and Bug was reaching for the third. “Which one will it be?” He grinned sideways at me. He already clasped a Dr. Seuss against his chest.

“Maybe Wizard of Oz?” I said. “Or. . . Alice in Wonderland?”

Bug tilted the book down for a glance. “You’re teasing. We don’t have Alice in Wonderland.”

“Yes, we do. Right there, on the shelf. We have lots of big kid books.”

Dropping the Dr. Seuss and scooting off the bed, Bug made his way to the same bookcases that have stared him down for more than a year. He itched a mosquito bite on his tanned arm as he stood contemplating the rainbow splashed across his wall.

My son’s bookcases house an eclectic mix of titles. We live in the two spare rooms, after all, so the meager remains of my personal library have spilled over onto my kid’s shelves. Yet, the diversity is as much by design by necessity. Over the years, I have peppered his Little Critter and Beatrix Potter collection with young adult novels, non-fiction titles, and a random assortment of what Bug refers to as “grown up books.” 

“Is this Harry Potter?”

I grinned. All seven books have lived at eye-level since the kid could first stand up. It has taken him this long to notice. “Sure is,” I sighed. “I don’t know, though. They are big kid books. No pictures. Do you think you can handle it?”

He grabbed the spine marked with a number one and puffed out his chest. “I have read big kid books before. I can handle it!”

He crawled back onto the bed and we took in the cover’s busy dazzle. “You know, kiddo, your daddy and I read this book at bedtime together, just like this.”

“You did?”

“Yep. Long before you were born.  We would read out loud in bed to each other, one chapter a night. We took turns. We read almost the whole series, just like that.” I opened the book and began.

Bug twisted and wiggled next to me, interrupting at irregular intervals for clarification. “When is Harry Potter going to come?” Kick, fidget. “What is all this talking?”

Back to the page, back to the tale, I guided my son’s wandering attention. I offered to stop but he insisted we continue. The story’s music soon pulled us in. Immersed, my voice found each character’s unique lyric. Bug’s body echoed the pace of the story’s deepening breath.  The ensemble settled into its rhythm there on the bottom bunk.

At last, the final line of chapter one sang out. “To Harry Potter – The boy who lived!” I smiled and snapped the book closed. Bug let out a shriek and burst into tears.

“I want more! More Harry Potter! Please, Mommy, just one more chapter! Please!”

“Tomorrow is the weekend, Baby. We can read two chapters if you want.”

“Can we read three chapters?” He rubbed his fist into his teary eyes. “Or four?”

I laughed and hugged him close. “We can read all weekend if you want.” I began to sing. In my arms, Bug whimpered his way to sleep.

What a haunting chord, this pride at witnessing my child’s righteous despair. My son cries out his disappointment at losing his nourishment. What sustains him now is not me; it exists behind garden doors to which I can only offer a key.  These tears are evidence of his becoming a literate boy. He is not just learning to read. He is learning to love to read.  At last, he hungers for the things he needs to thrive beyond the reach of this embrace.

Lapping

The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas

-Alfred Noyes, "The Highwayman"

Bug unfolds the telescoping poles and gasps in delight as they pop into place. The shock cord is missing from one, but we shove the pieces together and manage to jam them into the corner grommets before they collapse. Bug is better at helping with this than I expected. His development surges ahead under the powers of a mysterious momentum.  When we attempted this task a few months back, I had to guide his hands and grit my teeth through the whole exercise. Now, my son takes my multi-step directions in stride, snapping everything into its proper order. Within a few minutes, a dome tent is occupying the majority of the real estate in our back yard.

I had hoped to take Bug to the beach this summer. Alas, the stars did not align. For now, a suburban campout will have to stand in for the ocean. Bug does not seem to mind, even though he tells me far too often these days, “I hate your house, Mommy. I want to sleep at Daddy’s house forever.” It should sting, I suppose. Instead, his statement rolls off. I know he wants more of me, not less. At his dad’s, Bug shares quarters with Tee. At our house, he has to suffer the torture of having his very own room.

For all his cognitive headway, Bug is still just a little guy. He likes nothing more than to position himself squarely in the center of his parents’ gaze. Of course, he is also growing like swamp grass. I’m not so foolish as to believe a shared bed with Mom will be my son’s greatest delight in summers to come. This is a chapter quickly drawing to a close. It is becoming harder to call Bug’s attention back from its outward pull. For this brief moment, though, he still presses himself into my embrace. My son seems to want to disappear into me, even if only to have a safe harbor from which to launch his next voyage.

On this one unseasonably mild weekend, the least I could do in the absence of a sea is to give my boy a night with me.

We pile the nylon floor with two dozen blankets. In come the flashlights, books, pillows, water bottles, and stuffed animals.  I issue a firm edict against all electronic toys. The blackberry and portable games are all relegated to the house.

As night falls, we crawl in and zip up the screens. Then down. Then up. Bug climbs around on me, giggling. He splays his body out across mine, sighing, rocking ever so slightly from side to side. He twists into my limbs, pressing his chin into my shoulder.

Once he has drunk his fill of me, I help Bug strap a light to his forehead. We attempt to read about insect-eating plants. Bug turns in the direction of every new noise. “Listen to that!” A cricket. A critter. A flutter of wings. The lighthouse beam sweeps in arcs across the choppy surface of the night. Our story disappears and re-emerges between swells.  

Even after four books and the steady approach of the wee hours, Bug is still bouncing. I confiscate both torches, but his excitement is bright enough to light Times Square. Into the sleeping bag. Zipper up, too hot. Zipper half down. Shirt tag itching. Shirt off. Too cold. Zip the bag back up.

“Oh, baby, am I ever sleepy.”

Wiggle, press, hug, twist. “I’m not sleepy! Let’s stay up all night!”

“I wish I could. But my toes are too sleepy.”

“Your toes can’t be sleepy. Toes don’t go to sleep!”

“Mine sure are about to. You know what else is sleepy? My ankles.” I yawn big. “And my knees. Boy, are my knees ever so sleepy.”

I take a lazy stroll up my body. Bug giggles when I talk about how drowsy my bottom is. He thinks sleepy hair and sleepy earlobes are hilarious. A low tide is lapping at the edge of the tent. It begins to spill in. I let it roll on down my skin as I follow it back towards the outer reaches. “I have the sleepiest spine,” I drawl.

Bug is very insistent. “MY spine isn’t sleepy.” His voice is sinking under the weight of the deep.” My (ya-a-awn) legs aren’t sleepy at all.”

I bid goodnight to my toenails. Bug’s feet have beaten me to the punch. His breathing comes slow and deep. He snuffles, turns, throws a naked arm across my belly. Winged insects plead for mates through the dim moonlight. Their song calls up another wave. My feet give way, and I follow my son under.

Offering

Four perfect snow peas
Unfurl from the climbing vines
Despite our neglect

Make Believe

"Happy six months with SPP! So happy to have you with us!" - Best Boss Ever

You wake up every morning
don the cape
flex the muscles
grit your teeth
grin.

You wake up one morning
to find the costume
has become your very own
skin.