The Contents of a Tesseract

I grew up around boys. All of my cousins, for the first 10 years of my life, were male. My friends were mostly boys, and as I grew older, the most influential peers were boys.

So.. when I had a baby boy, especially after adopting a beautiful baby girl, I thought - piece of cake! I know about boys! This will be easy!

HA..

Most of the time, it has been easy. Most of the time. For some reason, boys seem to hit, get frustrated, scream, stomp, destroy much more frequently than girls. I wasn’t ready for that, but it wasn’t a big deal.

My boy doesn’t like to take baths unless you trick him into it. My boy refused to wear his Thomas train underpants correctly, mainly because Thomas wasn’t on the front, and he couldn’t SEE the picture that way. I wisedup, and bought him underpants with pictures all over, but that doesn’t seem to matter. A few months have passed, and now he wears them correctly “because things don’t squish that way”.

He loves dirt, jumping, and hanging off of things. He calls anything pink a Girl Toy. I saw him using his sister’s barbie doll as a projectile today. He was trying to hit a large stack of legos. If you can’t tell already, I’m pretty laid back as moms go. I choose my battles, and let him learn from his own choices. Of course, there are some exceptions.

It’s going to be sad when he gets older, and stops kissing me for no reason. I am consoled by something my grandmother told me once. Girls and their mothers grow up and away. Boys and their mothers grow up, but stay. I guess I should enjoy times like today. He’s got his pants and t shirt on backwards.

The underpants are right, though.

The line of his nose
The smirk of her smile
The color of his eyes, so brilliantly blue

The arch of her brow
The curl of his hair
All daily remind me of you.

I miss you, Dad. Your life was half-lived
With so many dreams and wishes undone
You left
When my adult life had only begun.

You demanded a promise
You asked that I stay
You were so worried about what She might do

You cried on my shoulder
You begged for my help
And I turned my life upside-down for you.

No longer allowed to follow my path
Trapped in existence that I’d never choose
For Her
I could do nothing but lose.

Here is my daughter
Here is my son
Here is my sweetheart to help me be strong.

Here is my family
Here is my life
My path is returning to where it belongs.

What She does isn’t my fault or my fate
I’ve abandoned the guilt that was not your design.
You’re gone.
She has her own life; now I can live mine

-Jen K

A good friend took his life last night. He had been having some trouble with life in general: lost his job, lost his apartment, running out of money, and feeling very lonely. Suddenly this past week, he got very angry, more at himself than the people he actually blamed, I think. We spoke through email at least four times a day - he lived in Atlanta, and I in Alabama. The only hint I got that he would do such a thing was his last email, which said “it has been nice knowing you”.

When I got the email, I called a mutual friend, and asked him if he thought Richard would kill himself. He said no.. of course everyone thinks no, don’t they. So, I replied to the email and demanded to know what he meant by that, and made sure he knew that we loved him.

Either he didn’t get the email or he didn’t care, because he killed himself. Violently.

Richard was a kind man with a poet’s soul. He and I had a strange ability to share our innermost thoughts with each other for the past 3 years. He lived for enjoying life, and saw work as a means to an end. We used to spend hours together “shopping” for his own private island, or his favorite kind of house - late Victorian, or just talking about nothing.

He and I shared a love of costuming, and I admired his ability to be so meticulous on every detail. Everything he made looked great. He loved our kids, and they called him Uncle Richard. He stayed with us for a long weekend last year, and it was a wonderful experience. He always listened. He had interesting things to say, and he had a wonderful sense of humor. He was my friend. I loved him as such. I really loved him. He said he loved us, too. Once.

And now I am so mad at him, I feel like screaming for a good week and a half.