Fat Tire

rad and random

There may be more than one way to tell each other things.

He's telling me about his chalk drawing, about fixie pig and pink bird, the characters he's sketched on the front sidewalk.  His voice does that thing where he’s saying something but it sounds like he’s thinking about something else.  And I do that smile where I don’t really get what he’s saying.
We're trying to make up, trying to forgive each other for strong emotions.  He's faster at it than I am.

I recycled a paper from school, one on which he'd practiced making the letter T approximately seventy five times. Horizontal line at the top, where the airplanes fly, vertical line from the middle down to the bottom where the grass grows, he explained when we looked at it together last week, circling the Ts we thought looked best.

When he helped take out the bin today, he saw the worksheet and began to cry, fat tears rolling down his cheeks the way a favorite toy might fall down the sewer grate.  The thing is, I've seen him make Ts for a few years now.  I didn't know the paper was special.  There's no way we can keep every page he brings home.

I’m wasting my breath.  No matter how valid my soliloquy, it’s lost on the boy who is gripped by disappointment.  I cannot manage his difficult emotions.  This summer, I remember, his favorite rock cracked.  Despite having hundreds more, infinite options, it must've felt to him like a skinned knee, without blood it still hurt.  This time it was my fault, I ruined his day, careless and cruel.  I could not change the way he felt, but I could listen and empathize, hug and apologize.  I could promise to be here, always.

There may be more than one way to tell each other things, and more than one way to listen.  Tonight he left a Lego structure on my bedside shelf, kind of like mints on my pillow in a fancy hotel, an obscure nonverbal message.  Please don't throw away my work, it whispers.  Thanks for being here, I think I hear.  I love you, loud and clear.

take it or leave it

Tolliver is due for his first haircut.  Overdue, perhaps.

When we suggest a trip to the barber shop, his response is always the same, swift and steadfast.
No thank you, I'm not ready to take a haircut.

In the bathtub and at the pool, and on days that are really humid, his hair looks great.  It curls up into tight little ringlets and doesn't hang over his forehead into his eyes.
Other days, most days, it looks a mess, ratty and unkept.
Every day it reminds me of his sister.

I think we're going to leave it for awhile.

Drenched

Sometimes I look at them, soak them up, and my whole body feels like a wet sponge, so full of love that there's no room for feeling much else.

what's next

We walked Tuck to school and wandered home.  He ambled around the back yard wearing cheap plastic binoculars from the toy chest at the library, sing-songing birdy birdy, tweet tweet.

He grew tired of looking for birds and, not really sure what to do with himself without his brother around, wondered What's next?

I needed to run a couple quick errands, so strapped him in his carseat.  He asked to visit the playground with all the rocks, pointing out the back window at a cemetery as we drove past.

He ate lunch on the edge of the front porch, legs dangling over the side, watermelon juice dripping down his tummy.  I not have any eye brows, he worried.  If I eat healthy foods, I can grow eyebrows?

I gave him a clean rinse before nap time, and before I could towel him off he needed to watch the bath water disappear down the drain.  It's a water-tex, Mom!

He chose a story about hefflalumps and the cartoon bear he calls Honey the Pooh.  

I woke him early to walk down the hill with me to get his brother.  I stroked the coppery fuzz of nap-frizzed hair, hugged him close as I stepped out the back door and opened the umbrella.  This is not a great day, Mama, he said.  He wasn't ready to be awake, wasn't eager to get wet.  Was feeling a little sad about Tuck being away at school.

It seems impossible that any of this could be forgotten, silly that I feel like I need to write it down.  Despite the fact that the day stretches on and on, it also seems to disappear in a blink.  What feels infinite and routine and too cute to forget will show up as just a blip on the hindsight radar, swept away by the winds of whatever's next.

summer to fall