Time Machine
Sweet sunshine spreads across your bed as you breath, breathe scented with Playdoh and black raspberries from the front yard. I watch your chest rise, fall, rise, fall.
“There’s my boy. Time to get up. Rise and Shine.”
That grin, before you even open your big blue eyes, those windows to your soul, those orbs that reflect my own face back to me.
the softness of your young skin, freckled from long summer days.
Here we are content in this solitary moment.
I have a desire to dive head first into a black hole to stop time.
Growing up means girlfriends, heartache, peer pressure...*** ( frankly I am not ready to have that conversation)
Growing up means getting closer to the time when you won’t really need me anymore. It means understanding that the world out there has teeth...
Then you will get your driver’s license, freewill.
I want to dive head first into that black hole to stop time so maybe we can hold onto this moment forever.
At bedtime last night you confessed you are scared of the those dark pockets in your room.
“What are YOU afraid of, Mom?”
I think I said fire, spiders. it was a lie.
I couldn’t bare to tell you about the funeral today. You would ask the question that doesn’t have an answer: Why was he driving so fast, Mom? And I would have to admit that I don’t have the answers this time.
Telling you would be like telling the moth about the flame, crushing your own dreams before you could even imagine them. I can’t tell you what it was like to watch his friends huddled in a circle, holding each other up to keep from throwing themselves into the grave beside him.
Past the circle, stood the body of his mother. Only her body. Her mind wasn’t there, It couldn’t have been. Because I am a mom. I have you, my boy and I know.I know that ****** created a vacuum for her hopelessness. Otherwise she would be ripping out her hair, screaming, clawing, jumping in the casket with the body, trying to forget that his lifeless image is now scorched into her brain for eternity.
That brain works like a time machine, gears turning, visiting the day at the ocean when he flew his first kite, seeing him in the photo next to his first bike, his first missing tooth, his first school dance, his first crush, his first basketball game, his first car... Memories upon memories turning brown like old photographs. Her time machine now searches for the memory of his last dinner at home, his last words on the phone, his last basketball game, his last breath....
My boy, I hope I never need that time machine. But that black hole will not keep you here with me in this moment, young and innocent. That biggest fear you asked about last night.... is losing you forever, my boy.
Stay alive. Erase all other words of wisdom ever parted from my lips. I don’t really care if you use the word “ain’t”. I will cover my ears. Leave your jammies on the floor, forget to wash your face, leave your bike in the rain, play baseball instead of walking the dog, lie about finishing that essay, come home past curfew because it took awhile to gather the courage to kiss her. I won’t be mad. You will be in this world and I can look into your bright eyes again tomorrow...without that **** time machine.