just decent rascally young fellows

There are things we say at our house - the first part of a phrase or line from a storybook, an inside joke or a jingle or a quote from a movie - that everyone else knows how to finish, a secret language that feels like a hug or a high five all at once.

Beyond O-H, there's Sheep in a jeep on a hill that’s steep...  and Muffin cup, muffin cup... or Why is the carpet all wet, Todd?

These are just a few things on a long list I hope the boys can recite for years and years, words that may feel like coming home.

Right now there's a tremendous amount of very age appropriate vocabulary slash slang thrown around - a level very much like the Wicked movie merch, justtt short of obnoxious. 

Gotta study for this test, chat. Don't be such dog water, bruh. Stop talking and lemme cook, I'm tryna lock it in. Like, Nelson Mandela was high-key salty about his country's policies so he went full savage to change them. I'm bouta eat, hundo P, no cap.

There's another thing I've noticed too, about words in our house. 

When worries are named out loud in the kitchen or at the dining table or burrito-ed into bed, their half-life seems to be halved again. It's a safe place to speak, and the sounding board of a brother or a stuffed bear or the butcher block, the labeling of the emotion, both things can serve to reduce the intensity. 

These are just small practices that create a little breathing space in the avalanche, tender ways to connect that weave a stronger net -- not sure that words will save us but they've helped hold us so far.

*as Ames describes them in Gilead

bird's eye

One of our friends was standing on the second floor balcony for the Singers' debut holiday performance earlier this week, and leaned over the ledge to record Tucker's piano accompaniment. The video he texted looked like drone footage, POV God.

I'm imagining classic sweeping overhead shots of all sorts of things these last few weeks: 

birthday celebrations with balloons and boardgames and cake baked by the neighbor, a lovely Thanksgiving spread and tailgating treats and restaurant meals, pie for breakfast, holiday shows and movie theater matinees and multiple concerts, books and cousins and baking and decorating, a visit to the conservatory

Zooming out, shifting perspective away from many of the finer details, feels like a generous thing to do in December.

thirteen

Dear Tolliver,

You stopped wearing your hat last week. And by "your hat" I mean at least the third, maybe fourth, iteration of the same camo MedFlight style, each one worn till it was stinky and frayed. I'm still not sure what this change signifies, but I did notice it coincides with year thirteen.

I love the way you move around the kitchen, cracking eggs and learning to measure ingredients with your heart, the way you brush past in a cloud of cologne and competence, on a collision course with adolescence.

If you are not swinging bats or casting lines, you are climbing - why use just two limbs to walk when four allow you to ascend? You move in age appropriate yet utterly shuddersome ways, to the tops of trees and, in Ireland, up the side of a church. You make me feel like Geppetto, like I somehow created a puppet come alive to do things I could never do, never dreamed of doing. It isn't easy for me to watch you test the limits of comfort, but it does usually feel like the right way to love.

You still read a lot of Garfield and Ariol and Nathan Hale, but you are also working your way through A Sorrow in Our Heart, a substantial work, fomented for decades in the compost of humanity, and I have no doubt you are folding Ekert's frontiersman wisdom into your own life.

You apply a lovely openness to new things, choosing most often not to decide whether it's for you until you've sampled it - British mushy peas, the wheeled luge, memoirs. You are learning to shake the belief that if you're not doing something perfectly right from the beginning, you're not worthy of doing it at all. I'm pretty sure Shakespeare and Babe Ruth worked through plenty of self doubt. 

One similarity between us may be our taste in home decor. The brass whale you said would look nice on the new shelves is exactly my style, understated and easy to dust, just the right shade of metal to go with the matte finishes, different from the plush cats and Black Keys posters your brothers gravitate toward. I hope you'll always shop with me.

There's something in your name I hadn't noticed until recently, Tolliver, that sounds like "to live." Not only do you measure up to that, you help me rescue dormant parts of myself. Your name reminds me of my good fortune, in lots of ways. When I say it aloud it feels like a tiny prayer. Actually, it may often be, because see above re CLIMBING.

This is the first time in years you have not asked to skip school for your birthday. You did ask for an elaborate meal scheme - chicken from Canes, waffle fries from Chik-fil-A and mac n cheese from Hot Chicken Takeover. This combination may be a misuse of time but it's also one I'm definitely going to make for you.

It is easy to envision you as a young adult, wrangling a classroom full of small children or decorating your first apartment. I try not to imagine too far ahead, you with a mustache or a mat of chest hair, managing fly fishing expeditions in Idaho. 

What I know for certain about you at this complex time could fit on the head of a pin.

What I hope you know is how lucky I feel, how loved you are.

xoxo Mom

casting a wish

It feels like a very hectic, very shaky time to be a human. 

I try not to be distracted by the massive peril that exists beyond the tepid nonproblems.

But if one bad apple spoils the barrel, what can happen with one rotten orange?

The boys take turns zooming past on a tiny bicycle tricked out with super high handlebars and, for special effects, a crushed plastic water bottle between the spokes. 

Could they be like some kind of fierce emissaries of the future?

When the world withdraws its mercy, I know to look for little things:

We are still cutting zinnias in rainbow arrays for the counter.

There are yarn projects and potholder loom loops all over the place.

Audition sheet music and monologues remain taped up by toothbrushes.

Gauze and goose feathers for fly hooks are scattered evidence of new skills.

There is music in every direction.

Life at home is strangely content. 

A shallow reservoir of magnanimity opens when I look at my children.

The boys are big-hearted and brave and so very wise.

Can raising good kids be a public service?

This is me not so much asking a question as casting a wish.

TRAP

Tuck played leading man Ephrain Salas, a kind and loyal firefighter, in the GHHS fall play TRAP by Stephen Gregg.

And he's already preparing an audition for the spring musical, The Wizard of Oz.

It's a joy and a dream come true to see him on stage!