Days 3 - 5

I have been absent from this space. But I have had so much for which to be grateful. So much it has drawn me away from dwelling on the things in my head; away from personal observations into the shared observations of special days with a family that fills my heart and breaks it open and fills it again.

This past weekend we have celebrated a little boy. A hooligan of sorts who has been making this planet a more spontaneous and joyful place for six years now.

He was my surprise baby. I thought he was a stomach bug, perhaps. I thought I was exhausted from moving to a new town, from raising an active and inquisitive toddler, from the miscarriage I'd had mere weeks before. I thought there was something wrong. When I finally went to the doctor because the symptoms were undeniably familiar, I discovered that there was absolutely nothing wrong. There was a tiny peanut, two months along, standing on its flipper legs and doing a little jig. I looked at the grainy picture full of snow and wondered at the tenacity of a little being who would come twice to see me. Who would hang out inside, ignored, disbelieved and dance.

This is the kernel, the essence of my Hooligan. He hangs out, content to live and talk and imagine in a world where everyone in the house is bigger than he is. Where people are busy with other things and he patiently follows them from room to room explaining the details of his latest creation, the game he's designing, the dream he had, asking questions about space, about eternity, about the flexibility of time. He walks in circles while he talks, to organize his thoughts. He dances from foot to foot while he stands. He jumps from space to space while he walks. He stops and grins and winks at me. He gives me a thumbs-up and finishes his sentence. He bounces merrily through a world that sometimes won't slow down and wait for him.

He is my surprising boy. He taught himself to walk while I was unpacking a house. He stored up all his words and expressed himself with sound effects until one day they all came tumbling out in complete sentences. He taught himself to read while no one was looking. He draws schematic diagrams of inventions that might actually work. He figures out his world by quietly building things and then demonstrating how to use them. He loves to run and laugh and make large messes.

He understands being the smallest person in the room, so his perpetual motion will slow and stop for a gentle word to a baby, a helping hand to a peer who lags behind. He is generous with praise and with gratitude, but he will brook no whining. He covers his ears and closes his eyes to shut out the noise of others' displeasure. "Just stop that and try," he will say, not unkindly. He reminds me not to yell. He holds my hand and hugs me. He does not understand meanness or smallness of spirit.

He is my Hooligan. He is always up to something. He was my surprise and he completed our family in a way we didn't know it needed to be done. He showed up and smiled at us and we all fell in love with his dark, mischievous eyes, the dimple in his chin, the smile that splits his face in half. He hugs with abandon, he kisses on the mouth, he pats arms and knees and shoulders while he speaks, and snuggles with sibilant S's. He gives us these connections, these simple reassurances that he is here, that he is real, that he is to be believed. And then he wanders off to the place inside his head that is full of tall buildings and space ships and mechanical devices, time travel, music and math equations of his own making and no one really knows what else.

I have spent these last few days in celebration of this strange and wonderful little boy who determined that he would live with us; that he would take his place and wait quietly for us to notice and that in the meantime, he would dance.