Chrisonomicon

Sunday, February 9, 2003

I played babysitter this weekend. He's a cute kid actually, kind of dorky, kind of loud, and smiles a lot, likes to pretend he's a wizard and carries around this sack of odds and ends, most from his disassembled microscope kit. But I know he's had some hard times lately and was sad, although his optimistic childish demeanor may have served a guise to the inattentive, and so M and I took him to the movies on Friday. He fell asleep, but I woke him up for the very last bit where Virginia Woolf says to love life for what it is and then put it away, after which he looked up at me and whispered, "I do that," and I nodded and replied, "So do I."

He tagged along most of the weekend, and I found a strange sort of excitement in breaking the rules with him, doing things I'm not supposed to be doing like avoiding homework, cooking with my deep fryer and skipping the gym to watch cartoons and play with M. Fighting Saturday afternoon traffic, we went to the home improvement store and the frustration and anger and tension that had built up jockeying for position in my car soon abated when, upon our first step in the doorway, breathlessly he exclaimed, "Whoa, cool." My eyes swept over the thirty-foot-tall array of power tools and lumber and switches and gadgets, and took in the smell of all that wood and dust and metal and a smile spread across my face, too, as I glanced over at him, sharing in his thrill. There was so much stuff and no adults to tell us what we could and couldn't touch or do. We were the adults now. The store was ours.

We walked through the store in a trance, his amazement contagious as he touched everything, turned unusual objects over in his small hands, listening, distracted, as I explained everything as simply as I could. We returned with the new pendant light I had bought for the kitchen and he with a handful of paint swatches to play with while I installed tracks in the ceiling, bobbing along to the contagious lyrics on a CD that Aaron had sent me, and when the bobbing and installing was finished, my walls decorated with enough colors to constitute fifteen gay pride flags, we meet up with M to rent another movie and eat junk food.

I couldn't get over how much fun I was having with this kid. I wondered where he's been all these years, why I hadn't ever spent this kind of time with him, and where he was going when I returned to work, returned to life. I took him to my nephew's first birthday party today and on the way home we talked about life and growing up and how it all happened so fast.

"When I grow up, I want to be like you." I chuckled at the thought and put my arm around his shoulders.

"Well," I replied, "I could say the same about you."