He waited for his son to wake, with coffee. He couldn’t sip yet. Still with such smolder.. light blows on surface. But he enjoyed the quiet. Then he was up. There was no more quiet, now only love for the chaos and catapulted conversation that was set to surround– the sharp paradiddle of sprints on the floor above. He went upstairs to see him, what project he’d assigned himself now. “Look, Dada! Look at me!” he said, standing on the table, with quarters and pennies, and other coins he’d taken from Daddy’s work bag, in each hand, a couple coins falling, Dillon watching them fall with hands still extended out and up, fists closed packed with currency.
“Get down, buddy, be careful…”
“Daddy.. um.. Daddy, you help me?”
Daddy lifted him from the table, onto the floor.
“Daddy, let’s read books..” They both sat and he went through all his books, all his books, each one, taling them all from the shelf then rearranging them in little vertical piles in the thin, long white shelves that were set on the floor, still there from when they first moved in. Daddy watched him look through the books, narrate where he wanted to for only a couple seconds then move to the next book. Daddy noted each movement, studied and envied. Why couldn’t he see everything as he did? Why did he lose it and at what age?
“Hey Daddy, this book a special book! A real special book for me!”
Daddy watched some more, helped him arrange the little manuscripts in their set piles– “No Daddy, you have to do like this,” he said, showing Daddy how to do it professionally and to Dillon’s right-then-and-there instituted standards.
Then they went downstairs, to Daddy’s coffee cushion. Now cold but he didn’t care.. the chaos was too colorful and too educational. Checking the time he saw he soon had to get ready for work– “Hey buddy, daddy’s gotta get ready for work.”
“No no no work daddy, not today, okay?”
Good idea, Daddy thought. No work today.. just more time in the new upstairs library, with his new teacher. More to lean, more to be taught.
More to love.
(10/10/15)
