becoming

The counters are full of peonies this week, an attempt to capture the vanishing mayfly version of flora that seems to fall over as soon as it appears. 

We walked home from a graduation party recently and ran into neighbors who later texted how much they love Hank's true-to-himself style. He wore a rainbow "Art" shirt with lavender sandals, a thin cross-sectioned slice of wood hanging from his neck plus an orange rubber loomed choker, and a new baseball cap. His whole look was an aesthetic bonanza really. We were practicing the song For a Moment from the musical Wonka. He'd spent much of the morning working in Chrome Music Lab building different parts, but got stuck trying to combine the rhythms and couldn't find instructions that might help. I was promising to put my slightly more effective googling skills to work to help him figure it out when we ran into more neighbors and Hank decided to play outside instead.

Tolliver took a course from Olympic luge athletes last week, as part of their "future slider" search. He arrived home with soleless shoes and a huge smile. He had texted from his Apple watch while he was still on top of the converted soapbox derby hill, "Could you go ahead and order me some new sneakers?"

Packing Tolliver's camp lunch the other morning, I noticed a small slip already tucked into the brown bag I'd left out on the counter the night before, labeled with his name. It was a note from his older brother, one with words like Have fun and Be safe that basically read like I love you. 

Plus a tiny inappropriate sketch in the bottom corner, because brothers.

As part of his Mother's Day gift, Tucker accompanied me to CAPA's "Schooled on Poetry" performance and both of us left feeling inspired. He had to work on some prose recently, his honors English final grade, and I found myself trying to articulate the difference between a retelling and a personal narrative. There was a lot of back and forth around what parts of the story pointed toward who he is. As he added vivid details to make his personality more apparent, themes around friendship and curiosity and hope floated to to the top.

What will the boys practice without my help, absorb without my teaching? What will they become good at because they want to, or by accident, or because they watched when we were unaware? What will matter to them this time next year? They are a bit like peonies, I think, in all of their ephemeral glory, three boys who are still very much becoming. Artists and poets and olympic athlete potential this week, something new next, and I am trying to pay attention to all of it.