Making it past
After I drove Lisa to work this morning, and then returned home to the circle of our driveway, there it was. Our rented, modest square of dumped rocks surrounded by thick layers of asphalt and baked by brilliant sunshine. Aidan loved it, oblivious to our years of making fun of such a miserable excuse for a front yard.
Evey week Leon came so the three of us and then the two of them could spend the day together. Aidan would return to the top of the stairs over and over, clearly requesting a trip out into the sunshine, to pick up and throw rock after rock or carry them about and leave them everywhere. He left them for me to find still, in the back seat and doors of the car, in my dresser drawers where I had left them after forgetting I pocketed one discovered far afield. Leon's trips with Aidan were absolutely faithful, regular, and reached even further through buses to local parks - anywhere green life could be found and safely touched by a one-year-old. He would even take Aidan back outside again on a given day, if Aidan requested it.
Not so much with me. I guess I am still waiting to begin really showing him the world.
I have a hard time making it past the front yard.
Today I didn't make it. The brilliant sun flashed the brilliant son on the mind's-eye of my heart and dropped me to my knees by the rocks. I couldn't get up, really, so I simply sat, squinting into the past and the future at the same time, seeing him and lacking him profoundly. And tossing rocks. Not far. Just to the edge of his range - as far as he would ever throw anything. Until a neighbor came home to circle our drive and I fled indoors where there is no need to cry and explain at the same time.
I don't know what I can do.
Who will look up and out and see everything differently? Who will stare raptly at what others find ugly or at best profoundly common and see fascinating fragments of this instant from which to build the future? Who will clutch my arms and legs with amazing, unapologetic strength, and claim and change parts of me for climbing and for comfort? Who can simply wake up in the morning without fear of any kind, open both arms, and surge forward into the brilliant day?
I can barely see to wipe these damned tears off my laptop.
I can't even get past the front yard.
| posted by Unknown @ 1/11/2007 10:53:00 AM
