thick head

These days are the thickest days, enveloping all my body. Water vapor from a steaming pot all around me lingering and curling around my elbows and calves, neck and hairline.

My brain, for the last two days, has felt the same way. Full of mucus from a cold, words directed at me slosh in my ears. My head is as foggy as the day and feels like it could be tipped over like a weight in a pool in the hot, wet afternoon.

Emily Dickinson poems on a picnic blanket undulated in thick air in the August afternoon with Brie and chocolate and my boy by my side.

August afternoons could be hateful and confusing afternoons, full of shifting legs, furrowed brows, and wet backs. But thick heads in August are peaceful to me. My disorientation is absorbed in a sense of pleasure that transcends all weather and sickness. The lazy days are as cumbersome but delicious as eating a sweet, drippy peach.

Mothering

Remember that feeling you had sitting in the back seat of a car as a kid not being able to understand the conversation in the front of the car? It happens to me even now. But for kids this feeling is pretty normal. It's not even limited to time in the car. Walking around kids are a few feet shorter, they get stepped on in crowds, and they are helpless. Their eyes see a tunnel-version of the world. Lots of waists of adults, lots of other kids, lots of edges of counter tops, lots of big cars, lots of big places. Like sitting in the back seat of a car all the time, a kid is tortured by constantly being a few seconds behind everyone on the news, the schedule, the pace.

With this in mind, I realize that patience with kids doesn't just extend to when they're doing something stupid without thinking about it. When they're naughty, they don't know why they shouldn't be naughty. The world is a cold, grumpy place full of adult waists and big rooms. Why should they listen to adults when slamming and locking the door allow them to play without interruption.

I've also learned that kids do some bad stuff that should probably be overlooked. I discovered that Natlie has been eating cheese puffs on her bed because of the orange greasy marks on her otherwise pristine bed spread. Part of me wants to chastise her. The other part of me tells me to ignore it. It's gross, but it is her bed. And therefore it's her choice to have the nasty stains of her snack where she sleeps.

Besides, I have bigger fish to fry with her.

Also, kids walk slowly. Pick them up and run with them like they're a football. Even if you don't run fast, they think they're going fast because their little legs don't go fast ever! Except when they have cheese puffs they shouldn't have or something.

I've learned you cannot over explain concepts like gratitude, reflection, remorse, guilt. The kid might as well be trying to do algebra because the concepts are far too abstract.

Last but least, try to be a mother with a companion. It's no fun to look after kids knowing you must be the go-to man for the kid all the time. And as my mother said, "Dads are just more fun." I'm far too worried about safety to take Natlie out to a waterfall or on a boat. Get married before you have kiddos, folks.