at the house where i'm staying i sit beneath a red umbrella that's under a blue sky. on the table is a red hair tie and a bowl of freshly picked green peas. color. it's how i live.
easier day, not so tired. only one nap. evening ahead - hanging with J while his parents go shoot the first footage for their first film on the old railroad tracks in sellwood. they're excited. making movies is fun.
here, where i'm staying, there are two black dogs and one black cat. i've stayed here many times over the past years. i measure my time here, in loss. perhaps that will change this time. i don't know yet - i've still got four weeks left.
big ones though, losses. first the baby, then sons, a brother. all blonde and blue eyed, and each with the same sort of feet.
odd, yes, this knowledge of feet. but each of them i put socks on which is a sure-fired way to observe feet. and three of them i put socks on their feet while they were in the hospital; i know the feet of the fourth. i raised him.
boys. one is gone forever.
but still, this summer day, i celebrate the living and those who are still around to play. this afternoon, because of rox's prompting, J and i discover "the river park" and he again proves his awesome throwing arm and his other obvious athletic abilities and his general and over-all sweetness and light. back home i cook him food and after we eat we read. i reluctantly tell him he must sleep; it's after ten and his parents will be home soon.
and here they are, with their first footage. coming through the door they smile. and i smile back.
some things hit harder than others. loss doesn't seem to spread itself thin, it seems to get dumped all at once. a tidal wave of grief. hard to catch a breath in all of that.
when i got to the hospital that morning, after he'd been admitted the night before and diagnosed with diabetes at the tender age of twelve, i acknowledged his mother warmly and conversed as long as was necessary for her to feel properly attended to - she was, after all, the mother of a now-diabetic child, and then i looked at him on his hospital bed with all his tubes and such and i said: where's your shoes kiddo. we're gonna take a walk.
boys' feet, their shoes. all those flat soles and tangled laces. i've never liked putting shoes on the feet of boys. it's something unnatural. they clench and resist. some shoving inevitably ensues.
but when it's done and they're back on their feet, on their boards, in their cars, on the courts, ladders, boats... that is the joy and that is the wonder and that is the stuff that makes me love boys.
until i notice a shoelace undone.
but they're out of my hands by then. all i can do is watch. down the concrete corridors of the interstates, across the intersections of the boulevards, in formation, in free-fall, in tree forts... boys, as they say, will be boys.
just please don't trip and fall.
see you next time,
love.