Little m Long a

I’ve just completed a whirlwind week.  Parties and practices, appointments and obligations.  Unofficially dubbed as Zane’s Fantabulous Birthday Week of Celebrations, it more closely resembled an out of control train perpetually gaining speed, rapidly approaching a hairpin turn.  Or a wildfire.  Maybe a drowning.  Call it what you will, it was exhausting and I am tired.

My kids are tired as well.  I’m not exactly sure when they decided to call it a night.  Stories vary and details are sketchy.  Someone mentioned 2am.  Others said never.  I feel the truth lies somewhere in between.  Heavy eyes and lethargy tell me that I’m not far off.

I woke this morning to the carnage that is a sleepover with friends.  The tent outside appeared to have been used but not for long.  Bodies lay strewn about the living room floor.  The room smelled of sleepiness.  ”Where’s Zane?” I asked Zia.

“He and Matthew went hunting for snakes,” she replied without looking up.

Tomes — delivered as matter-of-factly as if she were asking, “What’s for breakfast?”  Which, by the way, were the exact words that came from her mouth next.

I’ve spent the better part of nine years shaping a world ….. no, that’s not it.

A boy.

Preparing him as best I could for what the world around him is about to throw in his direction.  Has been throwing.  He’s strong, confident, independent.  He’s more poised to handle it than I was at his age.

I’d like to think that I am responsible for that.  I realize it’s more likely that he is who he is becoming solely because of him.  Not me.  He’s a good kid.  He picks good friends and they are good for each other.

Damn, I wish I was nine again.

I have 20 tons of gravel sitting in my front yard.  Check that.  I have 20 tons of worthless gravel sitting in my front yard.  Never mind how it got there.

I also have this cistern at the back of my house.  Check that.  I have a worthless cistern at the back of my house.  I’m pretty sure I know how it got there.  It’s obsolescence has made it worthless.

I shall add it to the list of worthless things I have presently laying about my yard.  For some reason, I shall call it lunacy, I decided that the worthless gravel in my front yard could have value, worth if you will.

I decided that the twenty tons of worthless gravel in my front yard would make for a perfect filler to the worthless cistern in the back of my house.

And so I commenced to filling the wheel barrow, one shovel at a time, on average 20 per load, and carting the said worthless gravel from the front of my yard to the worthless cistern in the back of my house.

Dig, shovel, empty, cart, tip and repeat.

Many times.

The worthless cistern in the back of my house is massive.  It’s cavernous, really.  It seemingly has no bottom.  The many trips that I have made to the back of my yard dumping wheel barrows full of worthless gravel into the hole at its opening have only made me sore.  I literally have nothing more significant to show for three solid hours of back breaking shoveling and carting worthless gravel.

Unless you call the blisters on my hands and a noticeable stoop something to show for my work.

I have 19 tons of worthless gravel sitting in my front yard. and there’s a very real possibility that it’s going to be there for quite some time.

I have seen the future.

It’s disturbing.

Actually, it wasn’t the future.

It was the present.

The now.

Today.

The thing about it, it wasn’t even my present.  It certainly was close, though.  It essentially shattered the visions I held within my mind of how the present appears.  At least how I interpret it to appear.  Put a pretty big spin on the past as well.

And now, I’ve got an image stuck in my head and it’s eating away at my insides.  Gnawing at me.  Peeling away the person I perceive myself to be and leaving me feeling a bit exposed.  Worried that I am as starkly changed.

And feeling a bit helpless regardless.