Paul, 2nd from left, with big hair and black sweats

Today is my younger son Paul's 17th birthday. He was a shy boy who struggled with social interactions, especially with adults--a child who very often chose to stay in his room organizing his baseball cards by nationality of last name, or dressing up as Weasel Man, or listening to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I look at him today, and I see all of those early activities reflected in his motivations, interests, and obsessions. He loves music and theater and growing his hair into a stylish mop; he thinks hard about literature and politics; he is a dedicated teammate and a sweet and romantic boyfriend. He has struggled hard to manage his shyness but has learned to channel it into performance and conversation. He has learned to read other people's needs and reactions. This past weekend, when we went to Hampshire to visit his brother during parents' weekend, Paul turned to me, without provocation, and said, "Mom, you look much younger than 50," as if he thought I might be anxious about my age, surrounded as I was by bastions of hippie parents. It was a silly moment, and we laughed, but it was a tender moment too--a child working to take care of a parent.

I think most parents of small children imagine that their tiny dependents will grow up and away from them. They envision a looming emptiness. And, yes, children do necessarily leave home and develop independent lives. But they also become your best friends. There's no one you know better, who knows you better. They are teasing chatterers who raid your cupboards for coffee; they are peaceable companions on the living room couch; they are idealists and satirists, sharers of worry and excitement. I am so proud to know them.

Spring on the Ripley Road

Dawn Potter

Knick knack, paddywhack,

Ordering the sun,

Learning planets sure is fun.

                        —Paul’s backseat song

Five o’clock, first week of daylight savings.

Sunshine doggedly pursues night.

Pencil-thin, the naked maples cling to winter.

             James complains,

             “It’s orbiting, not ordering.”

Everything is an argument.

The salt-scarred car rockets through potholes,

hurtles over frostbitten swells of asphalt.

             James explains, “The planets orbit the sun.

             Everything lives in the universe.”

Sky blunders into trees.

A fox, back-lit, slips across the road

and vanishes into an ice-clogged culvert.

              Paul shouts, “Even Jupiter? Even foxes?

              Even grass? Even underwear?”

Trailers squat by rusted plow trucks;

horses bow their searching, heavy heads.

The car dips and spins over the angry tar.

               James complains, “I’m giving you facts.

              Why are you so annoying?”

The town rises from its petty valley.

Crows, jeering, sail into the pines,

and the river tears at the dam.

               Paul shouts, “Dirt lives in the universe!

               I want to be annoying!”

Everywhere, mud.

Last autumn’s Marlboro packs,

faded and derelict, shimmer in the ditch.

               James says,

               “When you get an F in life,
               it’ll be your own fault.”

[From Same Old Story (CavanKerry Press, 2014). P.S. The final line should align with the rest of the stanza, but Blog says no.]