And when they stop talking and wander away to see the hermit crab in its aquarium or to get a drink of water he will keep drawing, until the teacher rings the little bell and now it is time for class everyone. He will stand and cross his hands over his chest (a Waldorf thing, centering the child and focusing on the will) forget to keep his feet together and his lips will move as the morning verse is said, the class clown in the row behind him not saying a word of it. And he will keep his eyes on the drawing and be planning the next detail:
possibly a different life and new parents, ones that will take him to Lego Land or at least, Target. Camping in the summer and a motel with two beds and a pool. To the movies and also, skiing. Snowboard lessons and the Space Needle because it is right here and how hard can that be. There would be a tree house with a ladder and its own refrigerator, no barbies allowed sign on the door, no battle droids. No Barney the purple but a sleepover with marshmallows and Lucky Charms for breakfast, anything he wants and can not have. Maybe George Lucas as dad, or Master Yoda.
And not a mother who says someday or I wish we could but we can't or when Dad gets a new job, the someday scariest of those things because where exactly does he find a someday and will he know it when he sees it and what then. Who will be in the someday and will there still be legos and what about parents, do they go to the someday place or do they stay where someday never seems to come, where they close the door and he can hear them talking but not what they say; and how does he get to the someday that his parents have talked about, the one he never asks for because he just does not. He is not one of those asking kids who go waaa give it to me who say I want that when mom is unloading the cart at the checkout. He has seen those kids and thinks they have a problem but then the mom usually gives them the thing so they have a problem but also the thing so maybe there is also luck. He asked once what is luck and mom talked about no such thing but choice, which made no sense. So when mom and dad said let's walk down to the beach he said it was a dumb beach and they said what? and then mom and how lucky and kids in Haiti and dad just said we're going whether or not. The crab with two legs gone lifted its claws like praise the lord! mom said and she laughed and waved her hand so the crab did it again, maybe halleluja the second time; a new word he had never heard that he could not picture but it had a nice sound, maybe somebody's name in a place where they spoke a different language, maybe Vancouver at the Olympics. The waves kept going out and the seagulls clacked the clams onto the rocks and then some beach glass he knew mom would really really like and a weird rusted thing he and dad tried to pull out of the sand; and then he did not want to leave but there was that time thing. Always the time thing, never enough sometimes not yet.
And while he is at school his mother will write about things she has seen and places where she learned many things and also felt them for the first time, some she had felt before just never knew it. She will walk in the meadow across the road and stare at the skim of slush in the brown water of the marsh, where two mallards rose before she got there and look at the color of the meadow grass and think the perfect color for a kitchen but she will not say someday. She can see the light coming, where the blue lifts away into the beginning of yellow like a man opening his arms. She will squint as the sun erases the pond and hear the ducks circling somewhere in the bright, also other things she has not seen and feel something she has felt before, hoping
for a way to give him this. All of this.
