The other
day I was rummaging in the secret spaces of an open cabinet above the
refrigerator for inserts to a Tupperware
popsicle set. I was sure the inserts
still dwelled with us, somewhere in the environs of our kitchen spaces. I found a cookie tin, no doubt a gift that
housed holiday treats at one time.
Pouring out the contents, I discovered the sought after inserts.
And a fried
egg.
Not a fried
egg made from a hen's egg, but a fried egg made of plastic somewhere in Korea.
Part of a
set by a major manufacturer of children's toys, purchased for the purpose of
keeping Alpha Son Nick busy while I prepared dinner. When the VCR & the backyard replaced his
need to be near me & help with dinner, the dishes & plastic food manufactured
somewhere in Korea were stored in his room in a brightly colored bin.
Later, when
Omega Son Sam was old enough to want to be near everything, he too, toyed with
the dishes & the fried egg & poured delicious tea in tea cups,
insisting that I taste.
Even after the
dishes & fried egg were retired, brought out for nieces & nephews, even
after Sam discovered the VCR & that climbing on the swing set and the fort
were more fun than a plastic fried egg manufactured in Korea, he liked tea
time.
One of his
favorite things was to get out a tea set from the china cabinet (his favorite
was a miniature in the Blue Willow pattern) & have tea time.
Where he got
this affinity for a European ritual, I don't know. It drove most of the males in the family a
bit crazy. Such a strong, macho little boy
liking tea time.
It is the
little things we sometimes forget until we find them, frozen in time, that make
a man. Things that matter as much as
care & diligence. Bits & pieces
& fragments of the world we create for them.
A fried egg,
the last remaining Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle (Raphael), the hand from a small
Mickey or Mini-Mouse doll, a miniature tea set, a Hoberman sphere, photographs
of my favorite inner-city graffiti hanging in his closet, my paintings in his
room, his name carved in the sidewalk, the books he reads. The life he lives.
A young man,
my youngest child, readies to leave, to build his own spaces, secret &
visible. Though I hold dear those
frozen moments in times, I look out the kitchen window & remember him
skipping through the backyard, singing to himself & the trees.
Keep on
singing, Sam.
