A late Saturday afternoon in the beginning of March means that the sunlight is already slipping toward its bed. The temperature is fish stick quality--frozen in the shade, but broiling in the sunlight--and the lawns all revel in their video-game-brown hues. My neighborhood has the same color palate, to be frank. With the now decades-long interest in beige stucco, the builders have almost made it so that the houses are camouflaged into the background of dead grass and dusty hills.
Outside, my boys roll around on their scooters and bikes, zipping in horizontal paths on the sidewalk. Newly minted friends and same-aged cousins join in, and their voices drift into the office through the window that I've opened for the first time since last year. They shout at each other in the high-pitched treble of prepubescence, their lisps and slurs of words bouncing off the houses. Nearby, the main thoroughfare hums in its asynchronous rhythms, sometimes louder, sometimes softer, depending on the size of the car passing by.
Inside, other kids are playing with the iPad's video functions or little plastic toys that are only interesting now because the cousins are here and they haven't exhausted the apparently finite resources of interest that molded plastic holds.
As all of this unravels about me, I think about the fact that my kids are all too big for the bikes they're using. I could swear that we bought a new bike a year ago, but my oldest is weedy, growing endlessly and always in directions that I can't anticipate. The next is more sedate and steady, but his knees hit the handlebars and he's still using training wheels. I didn't realize that one of the hardest things about being a parent would be my inability to explain how one rides a bike. I can remember how hard it was to figure out, but there's nothing I can think to say that would help my middle child find balance.
I hope that isn't portentous.
Every boy is shaggy, hair growing over ears and framing wide, curious eyes that seem eager to drink in the world. I sit above them, wondering about my own thirsts. I no longer look forward to the solid thaw of March, when the bikes of Christmases past were finally and officially and thoroughly enjoyed. These new Dowdles are repeating my steps, but I wonder if my parents harvested the apprehension that grows in the fields of parenthood. Did my mom fret about what kind of world she was handing me? Did my dad feel puzzled by me, incapable of repairing errors because apologies sound hollow? Did my parents worry when they couldn't see me for longer than five or six minutes?
The sunlight is turning sepia through the pollution and the filter of an early March sky as I sit and ponder at the end of a Saturday afternoon.
Outside, my boys roll around on their scooters and bikes, zipping in horizontal paths on the sidewalk. Newly minted friends and same-aged cousins join in, and their voices drift into the office through the window that I've opened for the first time since last year. They shout at each other in the high-pitched treble of prepubescence, their lisps and slurs of words bouncing off the houses. Nearby, the main thoroughfare hums in its asynchronous rhythms, sometimes louder, sometimes softer, depending on the size of the car passing by.
Inside, other kids are playing with the iPad's video functions or little plastic toys that are only interesting now because the cousins are here and they haven't exhausted the apparently finite resources of interest that molded plastic holds.
As all of this unravels about me, I think about the fact that my kids are all too big for the bikes they're using. I could swear that we bought a new bike a year ago, but my oldest is weedy, growing endlessly and always in directions that I can't anticipate. The next is more sedate and steady, but his knees hit the handlebars and he's still using training wheels. I didn't realize that one of the hardest things about being a parent would be my inability to explain how one rides a bike. I can remember how hard it was to figure out, but there's nothing I can think to say that would help my middle child find balance.
I hope that isn't portentous.
Every boy is shaggy, hair growing over ears and framing wide, curious eyes that seem eager to drink in the world. I sit above them, wondering about my own thirsts. I no longer look forward to the solid thaw of March, when the bikes of Christmases past were finally and officially and thoroughly enjoyed. These new Dowdles are repeating my steps, but I wonder if my parents harvested the apprehension that grows in the fields of parenthood. Did my mom fret about what kind of world she was handing me? Did my dad feel puzzled by me, incapable of repairing errors because apologies sound hollow? Did my parents worry when they couldn't see me for longer than five or six minutes?
The sunlight is turning sepia through the pollution and the filter of an early March sky as I sit and ponder at the end of a Saturday afternoon.