marvel

The boys drew comics all weekend long, moving from the kitchen island to the dining table to the desk downstairs. Labeling folders for finished comics and works in progress. Asking Siri for synonyms, what's another word for steal, for cringe, for annoying. Offering each other ideas and helping each other sketch. Leaving eraser dust and lead fingerprints and paper scraps in their wake.

And I remembered how, for so many years, the boys seemed to inhabit every molecule of my personal space, their needs tendrilling out so compellingly that I couldn’t distinguish theirs from my own. But now, as they inch slowly farther from us, their worlds expanding and their independence growing, sometimes it is us pursuing them, wanting to be in their orbit.

We pushed pause on their projects for a ski lesson and the science museum, interrupted them to offer cereal and crab rangoon, to suggest math homework and piano practice. But otherwise they were drawing for hours on end.

Tucker has a notebook that he carries all over the house, constantly drawing. He sits up at bedtime with his little clip-on lamp, and draws almost every night before he falls asleep. This is amazing to me, when kids do stuff like this, stuff they just decide to do with no prompting, no suggestion, no encouragement, just all them, becoming themselves.