Tristan
The boy sits in the front seat of the bus as she hollars 35 miles per hour down these two lane roads we dwell on. His hands are stuffed full of beeswax, fingers needing and knotting through the stuff some kitten sculpture. He finishes it, showing it to me proudly. I smile, I love it, it’s beautiful and looks amazingly cartoonish. He’s got a real knack for sculpture. I tell him how grand I think it is and he immediately smashes it, in pursuit of his next accomplishment with the little waxy pile.
His hair, pouring down over his forehead, over his eyes, sometimes as far down as his chin depending on how long it’s been since the scissors had their way with him, is dirty from 8 year old hands and the muck, mire and mischief they get up to. His lips are mustached and encircled with chocolate, dark chocolate that he’d savored for nearly twenty minutes though it was barely half of what most convenience stores would convince you was an appropriate size for a single serving candy bar.
He looks out the window now and then, just to see where we’re at, but staring at endless climbing mountains, the ocean, vast flowing fields of wheat, he’s not that concerned. He doesn’t need more than a moment to take it all in and then he’s back into a book or working with the beeswax again or playing with some other toy that can keep a young man occupied for hours. He battles two GI Joes and the conversations they exchange while in the heat of war are so funny I can’t help but laughing. He looks at me and asks, drawn out and long, “Whaaaaat?” I can tell he’s slightly embarrassed but I reassure him of how excellent it is that he has such a big imagination and he goes back on with his pursuits. We’ve spent nearly every day of his life together and neither one of us is much embarrassed about anything the other might do. Flatulence, singing out loud, the occasional late night pants peeing accident. It’s all good. Share the same cups, hold snotty hands, these are the things of solid father/son combos and certainly of ours.
I think of when he was a baby, I could fit him in both of my hands. I imagine him as a teenager, us riding motorcycles across Europe and him eventually going on to live his own life. Will he decide to go off to college to pursue a degree and women and keg parties? Will he take his money instead and travel South America by bicycle? Whatever he becomes, pray not Republican or Christian of course, I’ll support him, even in those pursuits if he somehow is tricked into them. To watch a thing grow from a lump in a young woman’s belly to a crawling mass of bubbling spit to a young man is a powerful way to know of what humanity is so capable.