| |
Chris is six years old, and after the long Memorial Day weekend, instead of going to bed at the usual time, he stayed up and drew a picture of some flowers in a vase, the way Matisse might have imagined, with a darting goldfish here and there. He said he just had to. When he finally finished, he allowed me to put him to bed, and kept talking about his sketch and how he could feel the water in the vase, perfumed with fallen, red rose petals; he talked of the glass and how he felt part of it-- its smoothness, its roundness, its relationship to the plane of the paper on which it was drawn. (Being left-handed, I am convinced he is right-brain dominant-- the visuo-spatial side.) And while settling down under the soft bed-sheets, he meditated briefly in the lotus position, stating how connected he was to the special gifts God had given him, as manifested through his "true self." These stunning comments were his words; they were not mine, for I've been taught somewhere-- perhaps unconsciously-- that this kind of language, even at his age, is a bit too whimsical, impractical, and ill-conducive to success in upper middle-class suburbia, where it seems that even middle-school education is already meant to prepare our youth for more serious and pragmatic concerns.
Yet when he fell to sleep, I reviewed my own day, and how, at age forty-one, I ran my personal best in our home-town Memorial Day 10K race; how, despite how juvenile I felt, I ran home like a varsity team track-man pumped-up on adrenaline, to shave my legs the way all super-athlete, Lance Armstrong types do, my wife sneering and snickering behind the bathroom door, shouting at me not to mention it to the kids. Then I thought about how I like to write poetry and stories that probably really suck, while I take respite from diagnosing brain cancer and Parkinson's disease. I thought too of how I used to drink and smoke instead, worrying about money, the mortgage, this and that, and how maybe both my wife and I tend to forget just what that was like. No, there's no going back there for me.
No, I am certain we had a fun and productive day in all that was planned and unplanned, and after I paid homage and respect to our uniformed men and women who had secured for us the safety and freedom of this very day, I thought too of memories of a more personal and wonderfully naive sort. I thought of the ghosts I had begun to recollect from childhood, the kind that keep you alive and young, those forgotten daimons and angels with unclipped wings that still flutter through the fibers of our "grown-up" brains. I thought of the freedom I had, like my son, indulging in pure pleasantries, youthful ambition, and fresh fantasies, and how that freedom emanated from both without and within. More painfully, I pondered the trajedy and loss for all those still alive-- and as early as age six or seven-- who had already lost them; how they themselves had become the ghosts and splintered souls of their own un-recovered innocence and freedom. And so I put my son to bed, content and proud that-- at least on this day-- we were both among the most happy, alive, and eternally free; that we were both part of something larger, though full and seamless, and wholly self-contained, spanning the spinning stars as we darted, dove and soared, with never a thought we'd die, sink or fall.
|
Help Us Stop Plagiarism -
Nearly all works at PnP are original. However a few people choose to plagiarize.
To check, choose a phrase from the work, then either drag and drop to the search box or copy and paste.
click on search and works at Google will be shown which match. Just to be sure, please do this before
you recommend or rate the work highly...
|
 |
|
|
|
Select a Random Work
from Stories
|
|
Welcome !
