Lines what wiggle.

He’s in my lap and we’re reading Lines that Wiggle.  He keeps saying “what” for "that" -- Lines what wiggle, lines what bend...  I correct him, regretting it a nanosecond later, wondering when I became the stodgy spokesperson for the Accuracy at All Costs Club.

He holds up a sign and tells me that it shows what his computer screen looks like.
PH?101, I read.
No, he says, It says 101?HP.
I explain that it’s hard for me to know that because people in our country read and write from left to right.
Actually this is a different way of reading than you know about.
Oh, of course it is.  I bite my tongue.  No one named me Enforcer of the Right Way.  Why am I bothered by the particulars?

Tollie’s covered an entire sheet of printer paper with blue lines.  I’m drawing a fire truck, he smiles proudly.
Lemme show you how to draw a real fire truck, says Tuck, our household's new Commander of Details.

And there it is.  I see myself as a sower, broadcasting seeds.  Words fall off me and start growing in him, small ideas become shade trees of belief, and I’ve inadvertently planted something that blocks his view of something else.

Tuck used to say forth and back when we pushed him on the swing, when he was learning to pump his legs: fooorth and back, fooorth and back.  We didn't correct him.

There are only so many things to go forth and back about.  He'll learn which direction to write and Tollie will learn to make red fire engines with wheels, or not.
It's hard to let your children grow when you've stopped growing yourself.  I'm learning that the line what runs between right and not right may be gray, or it might be blue, but I'm sure it's a little wigglier than I knew it to be.