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.