Drat the file and drat the bone!
Spring Break.
It’s uncanny, really. Every
break I’ve had for the last two years– whether christian holiday, or a
seasonal break, by little angel has managed to get himself suspended.
If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was doing it on purpose. But he
doesn’t keep up with my schedule, so I doubt it’s premeditated. It is,
however, uncanny.
This latest deal is pretty sad. He was going
to the bathroom with all the other little boys, of course unsupervised
(what’s wrong with these people?) and a little boy blocked the door,
talking shit, and wouldn’t let Joss in. Joss argued for a minute and
then shoved him out of the way. Of course, a brawl broke out and they
were both suspended for 3 days.
I asked Joss why, (for the love of god, sweetheart, why why why)
didn’t he just go back to his classroom and grab his teacher and go
back? Well, first I asked him what he did wrong, and what he should
have done instead. he answered correctly. I asked why he didn’t, and he
said sadly, "I really had to go." What are you gonna do, you know? He
goes back on Thursday.
father, gods bless him, was replacing a faucett and pipes for my 85
year old godparents. Laying on his back in the cabinets, his rib cage
was resting on a ledge 5 inches off the floor… of course he broke a
rib. Or maybe he cracked it, and it didn’t break until he sneezed
yesterday. Whatever the case, he fixed the sink on friday and I didn’t
get him to the hospital until yesterday. The man’s nuts. He couldn’t
get out of bed withoth groaning ( my dad is not a groaner) and it took
half an hour of him moving incredibly slow just to sit him up. Of
course when he got onto his feet, he said he was fine and didn’t need
to go anywhere. I dragged him anyway. It was kinda of funny, he told
all 3 nurses that interviewed him "something’s moving around in there–
I can feel it" and they all told him it was probably a torn muscle. He
nodded every time and gazed off into space. The doctor (I swear to god
a clone of chrissy kistler) came in some 4 hours later and he told her
the story again, and she look at it ribs and poked him a few times and
told him it was a torn muscle. My dad did the same nod and stare off
into space, quietly repeating there was something "moving around in
there". She went to check out the x-rays, and came back. She said it
was a clean break about 2 inches from the end, and there wasn’t much
they could do by give him some pain meds and something to help keep his
lungs open so he doesn’t get pnemonia. Of course he isn’t going to
worry about his lungs which makes me crazy and I’m probably be the
worst nag ever for the next 2 months or however long it takes to heal.
Pnemonia at his age isn’t cool.
(at the ER)
Anyway,
I dont’ have a lot of other news. I’ll be spending the rest of my break
reading irritating books (erasmus, the great gatsby, 16th century
essays) and doing another irritating lab report for psych. I’ve grown
so impatient with school. Speaking of which, the going to the UNCvsDuke
game didn’t work out very well. I couldn’t get him in, ewven with the
borrowed student ID that looked a lot like him. Security wanted a
drivers license to match. So we went to a bar off Duke campus and
watched Duke get chewed up there instead of live in person. My brother,
being a die hard Duke fan, was incredibly disappointed and in a rather
bad mood; but he didn’t take it out on me, which was rather shocking.
He said he wanted to spend the day with me, and he did. I even got him
to put a tarheel tatoo on his face in an effort to get him into the
game. Game aside, it was a pretty good day.
(on Franklin st.)
Oh,
cuteness. Or maybe sadness. The other night I took Joss out to eat and
he wanted to swing by his old school, the one he went to last year, on
our way home. I did, and I’ll be damned if he didn’t wax nostalgic in a
way to put me to shame.
it
was dark, and he stared out the window with his cheek resting on the
glass, and said "I had a lot of good times there. A lot of memroies. I
miss it… I wonder if they remember me…" My little mind was blown.
So melancholy, you know? He pointed at the feild and the bus circle,
telling me he played there, or waiter over there for the bus, like it
was 20 years ago or something. It’s been a year and a half. To chear
him up I drove on all the sidewalks and stopped about 5 feet from the
front door, praying to chance no cops drove by. He laughed, appalled
and made me get back on the road. I’m suppose to stay between the
lines, you know. 
He turns 10 in only 4 months. 10. can you believe it? it’s a good age, minus the stubborness… or maybe that’s just him.
In an effort to make this post even longer, I’m sharing the Billy Collins poem that seriously reminds me of my kid…
On Turning Ten
The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I’m coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light–
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.
You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.
But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.
This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.
It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.
March 13th, 2007 at 11:46 pm
awwwhh
Jenny/Jos
I’m listening to the ever-annoying sound of my cats playing with bottlecaps while I read this, (note to self: get rid of bottlecaps) as always, amazing and moving blog. The visual of him with his face on the window, reliving last year like it was a decade or more ago, it stops my strange and bitter heart.
Two things:
One: I was a melancholy kid, and it served me well, as I had perspective, damnit, while my cohorts freely vistied (then) modern day vises. This reminds me, as I recently watched the movie adaptation of my absolute favorite Childhood book and I was angered and unabashedly critical of its cheesy interpretations of themes I felt (and still feel)were ground-breaking and illuminating and all-too important. So if you haven’t read “A Wrinkle In Time” by Madeline L’Engle I suggest you do, as it changed my life, so to speak, when I was ten, and it continues to change my life, now. DON’T watch the Disney movie adaptation as it is awful and deserves to be burned upon the pyre that all bad movie adaptiations deserve to be burned upon.
I was jealous of myself too, when I was ten, it’s natural for sensitive, super internal kids, young and old.
TWO: I keep thinking of this quote from Stephen King’s “The Body” the novella that “Stand By Me” was based on, when he said ” I never had friends like when I was televe, Jesus, did anybody?” But for me it was when I was 16, not tweleve that I made those friends, you included, that I miss, that haunt me, that make me wish it was that easy and hard at the same time.
Oh, and third, I once almost got into a fistfight with a snooty Poetry major from State about the merits of Billy Collins, and I’ll slice a mother scratchcher who can’t see the beauty in something like “Picinc, Lightning” or the deep and dreamy mystery or “Marginalia”, my favorite poems by him, the master, the one who doesn’t bother escaping us all, Mr. Collins.
Sorry I rambled so long, it’s just that I miss you, all of you, and I’m jealous of myself.
a