in his hands

His my first. The first one we came up with. The first one bestowed upon us. The first one who pressed through and was laid into my arms.

He appeared and was ready for everything the world might throw at him. He seemed not to need me except for sustenance. Father was his obsession and I didn’t quite know what to do with him. Still don’t and yet I understand him like the sun and moon and stars. That little ball of fire grown tall now and growing closer to a man. Where does the time go? They warned me and warn me still. It goes, it goes, it goes…

He was never one to come often or quick and I did not hold as tightly then, back when I was younger, more restless, unaware of life’s scheme’s and tricks. Still he makes me paper chains and hand carved gifts. What happened to the building of last year? Content then to dabble in scraps. Now he is on to buildings and grandiose ideas, frustrated at his lacking and I fear growing afraid to try. How to give him the skills and still leave the room to grow?

Some days, some minutes, he drives me to the brink. Why are the letters so hard and the chair so slippery? Sitting quiet an impossibility. I ask him to hold the pen in his hand, not to touch, to think as I do and focus… And I don’t treasure who he is enough.

Who he is. The little man who runs into life, away from the center into the fringe, the wild parts. Will he rip my heart out? The little boy who flings himself head long into all that is dirt and wild, light and life. At home in a tangle of plants, charging up mountainsides, with wind and tide, finding all God’s creatures.

He brings me these things I do not even wish to hold, would never even see. He brings them and I recognize all that I need. His hands full of life itself, my one desire. Him doing at a quarter my age things I would never conceive.

I clutch at goals, manuals, steering wheels. I hope I have not failed too badly. He has never been one for hugging, but he brings me treasures. What I did not know I must have. Red hair and dirty hands, my uncontainable  love.