Little Man

He used to like it when I ruffled his hair.

He had a buzzcut often, hair like peach fuzz, and I loved to touch it, staticky against my hand.

He doesn’t like me to touch it now, afraid  I’ll mess it up. He keeps it blowdried in a perfect coif.

His around my waist were like a lifesaver, and I was pulled to shore by his innocence, his happiness, his kid-brother antics.

Always the antics. Always the mischief.

A cellphone thrown out the car window, forty dollars flushed down the toilet.

A laughing little demon.

A wonderful, giggling little devil he was.

He has a deep voice now. His voice was the first thing to grow up.

His shirts match his shorts and he wears a clean one every day, and he smells like Axe cologne.

Girls laugh high and shrill when he is around. He likes that they do. He likes them.

He has always loved girls. He had crushes on my school friends when I was in elementary school, following them around, demanding to be heard, to be loved by them. They thought him charming.

He was an emotional whirlwind, a wild thing. He would cry, scream, kick. I was scared by him.

But I would sit with him sometimes and stroke his sweaty red face and he would be soothed.

I would tell him that I loved him. I did, and I do.

Sometimes he would wake at night, and I go to his room, next to mine, and tell him it would be alright. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn’t. I felt brave for doing it.

I miss how much we touched, he and I. His pudgy baby hands in mine, kisses on his round cheeks.

I still hug him goodbye and I still tell him I love him, but now it is a quick and awkward pat.

 I don’t know what to do with him, this growing boy.

He says it too, that he loves me, confident like a man. He tells me to have a good day. I tell him I will. He strides out into the world, scrubbed and grinning and ready for the ladies.

I love him so.

I will miss him so, when I go.

He will miss me too, my little man, not so little anymore.

 There is something tragic but lovely too about boys becoming men.

Not so little anymore. 

The Common Denominator

I love children

I have loved them since I was one of them myself, loved holding the hands of someone smaller, hauling someone’s baby around.  Loved their soft bodies and starfish hands, their smiles  bright as a camera flash.

I have taken care of many children, numerous new people, small humans  of all shapes and sizes and places.

Sometimes, I mind little ones who live in homes that are large and beautiful, homes with big paintings and expensive furniture.

These children have rooms filled with toys, and they show them to me as if we are in a museum, taking me on a tour of their possessions. They always seem hard to please, these little aristocrats. Life bores them already. They walk away from their dolls, leave them abandoned, limbs splayed on the couch.

Sometimes I take care of young ones who live in cramped apartments,  whose toys are few and worn and well-loved, and who are very poor, but do not seem to mind.  Their smiles are wide and uninhibited, and they never look like they are posing. Their dolls stay in their arms, protected. Held close, so that they cannot escape, cannot be lost.

But all the young souls I have known, no matter if their mother is a maid or a PHD, all the children are the same.

In a few essential ways, they are the same.

They all like long hair, hair they can gather with their fingers and tug at.

They like it when I let them crawl on me, and they nest in my lap like  birds.

They like silly faces, especially when  they are unexpected, when they surprise them.

They like to explore.

They like soft cotton fabric, and they like to lay their heads against it, especially when there is a body beneath it, warm and inviting.

They like sweet things, but not too much, because then it overwhelms them and the world is manic and bright. Just a little, just one cookie, maybe two. They like that.

They like the sound of a voice reading, sharing a story.

They like to play, to create worlds. It takes so little for them to escape, one cardboard box, a rocket, a home, a boat.  They laugh like they have a secret.

It makes me happy, to see that at least when we are small we have a common denominator.

I see kids on the news and in my books that are homeless, or underfed, or hurt, or alone.  Their eyes are big and dark,serious. They have no doll to hold.

I want to help them.

And I know I can, I can, because they are children.

And children, children I know.

I know how to hold them, and sing to them, and talk to them.

So I will go to places that need people to  hold children’s hands and make them feel safe, and I will do that.

Because in some essential ways,

They are all the same. We are all the same.