Children & Parenting
Real Name
I can remember walking down the street, saying my name over & over, until all of a sudden, it didn’t sound like my name anymore. It didn’t even sound like a word at all & then I stopped & the silence rushed in & whispered words that sounded more like my real name & I smiled & thought to myself how surprised my parents would be when they found out what a mistake they had made.
Real Dream
This holds a promise to all the children of the world, which is how you can tell it’s a real dream of America & not one of those dreams of fear & death that glitter so brightly on tv.
Quiet Pride (No Gender)
There has never been a day when I have not been proud of you, I said, though some days I’m louder about other stuff so it’s easy to miss that.
Quiet Pride (daughter)
There has never been a day when I have not been proud of you, I said to my daughter, though some days I’m louder about other stuff so it’s easy to miss that.
Quiet Pride (son)
There has never been a day when I have not been proud of you, I said to my son, though some days I’m louder about other stuff so it’s easy to miss that.
Put Together
don’t be fooled by appearances he was all put together when I sent him out 10 minutes ago
Purple Madonna
One time on Hollywood Boulevard I saw a young girl with a baby. It was a crisp winter morning & her hair shone dark purple in the sun. She was panhandling outside the Holiday Inn & the door clerk came out & told her to be on her way & I wondered if anyone would recognize the Christ child if they happened to meet. I remember thinking it’s not like there are any published pictures & purple seemed like a good color for a Madonna so I gave her a dollar just in case.
Promise
the water washed away everything but the chance to begin again
so we came from cities & towns, from long golden fields
& we stood side by side until we made a bridge to dry land,
back to a place we have promised to hold safe for each other’s children,
back to a place called America
Proper Steps
I only do this until I get dizzy & then I lay down on my back & watch the clouds, she said. It sounds simple but you won’t believe how many people forget the second part.
Proper Steps (masc)
I only do this until I get dizzy & then I lay down on my back & watch the clouds, he said. It sounds simple but you won’t believe how many people forget the second part.
Process
It’s an invention, he said. What’s it do? I said. I don’t know, he said. It’s not finished yet.
Present Tense
I think they’re going to be great grown-ups, she said, because they’re really awful children.
Pragmatic
He wanted to be big so he could do all the fun stuff but small was better when it came to getting out of work.
Pillar of Flame
One summer night, we took my parents’ grill & we put in some sticks & paper & soaked the whole thing in lighter fluid & then my friend turned on his shortwave radio & we listened to some scientist in Houston who was saying where Apollo was at that moment & at the exact time it went over us, we lit the stuff in the grill so the astronauts would look out & see this light & they’d say ‘What the hell is that?’ & we danced around the pillar of flame & sparks laughing wildly because while the astronauts were out there unlocking the mysteries of the universe, we were back home in Chicago making more of them.
Piranha Fear
I can’t take a bath, he said, or the piranhas will get me. Don’t worry about that, I said, Piranhas only eat clean people. You’ve got nothing to fear.
Pirate Logic
I’ve found it’s best to leave the hard moral questions to them what has hard morals, he said.
Perfect Day
It was a day filled with the glow of ordinary things & we passed them quietly from hand to hand for a long time & someone said she had picked a perfect day to be born & I think all of us felt the same.
Opposition
I just tell them to do things they already want to do, she said, & even then, it’s like pulling teeth.
Options
I told him if he kept being mean to his brother he might come back as a rodent in his next life & he shrugged & said that’s the chance he’d have to take.
One Child
I hope it will be said we taught them to stand tall & proud, even in the face of history & the future was made new & whole for us all, one child at a time.