The ghosts who throw underwear and draw hearts.

Something frequent, familiar, singular, and sublime every time.

You don’t choose how they play

He had them looking for ghosts. In manic fashion, he directed his younger brothers, herding them down hallways and into dark closets, looking for the evasive ghosts; ghosts which emitted high-pitched gurgles and screams and shuffles that almost sounded as if they were emanating from the leader leading the pack hunting for them. But I’m probably imagining that.

They were loud and honestly, the sounds were grating and made me irritable, and I wanted to get them playing or doing something else. Anything else.

But this is what they wanted to do. Together. Imagining. Making noise. Being scared. Pretending and following and leading and huddling together and laughing and shrieking.

Who am I to stop that?

Things I didn’t think I’d need to address, but did

Why are you throwing your brother’s dirty underwear on your other brother’s pillow? I asked the 2-year old,

and the 11-year old stormed in with a frown and the 5-year old shuffled in with a grin,

and we had a short conversation with many dueling voices and explanations for why it’s okay or not okay (depending on who you ask) to throw one brother’s dirty underwear on another brother’s pillow.

Intermission

For more on a handful of school-related topics today, you can take a skim-through of this post over on Very Long Media : A Friday : Candy Land, naps, non sequiturs, summary versus synthesis. (opens in new window)

Other things

A boy drawing pictures of friends and families and ranking who he likes the most by putting hearts above certain ones.

This runs counter to everything I feel strongly about when it comes to not assigning “favorite uncle this, favorite aunt that, I like them the most” sort of deals.

He was immersed in his world of art and relationships and I sighed, partly with happiness and partly with sadness and partly with bewilderment, because you don’t always know what to do in these situations, and I left him alone, with his paper and pens and hearts surrounding depictions of his favorite people today.

Big boy matters

Are you a big boy? I ask.

Yeah. he says.

Okay, I say. Wanna try sitting on the potty?

I am - he thinks carefully, his blond hair manically dancing in duet with the neurons frantically firing underneath - I am…a little baby actually. I not a big boy.

Okay, I sigh with my mouth closed in a quarter smile. Okay. You are growing into a lovely big boy. Slowly. Perhaps we should go change your diaper now.

And that’s what we did, and I am very, very good at changing diapers.