Sometimes parenting in the active, the verb parenting, is the simple best.
Summer encroaches. The sky is thicker. Stewing in the heat and bright eyes of sun.
The greens are greener. They fold in over us in a way that comforts me like the old growing plants and creepers of Mississippi. Southern California comes into its own and blossoms. The light curls over Ever's face. I work on my copywriting assignments on the wooden desk I inherited from my mother years ago, pushed agains the open window. Ever is feet away on the netted trampoline in her Captain America underpants, flinging her body as high into the air as she can, sturdy legs working furiously- those same legs that kicked against my ribcage /trampoline/ for nine bizarre months ( my gynecologist: i've never in all my years seen a baby continue to turn like this in the ninth month )- and the sky mottled overhead, she spreads her arms and legs in the air and her smile is enormous, the smile of God! and Lola is on the patio bricks with a guitar and her hair in her face like the hair in the face of millions of teenagers before her, and she is singing i'm just a teenage dirtbag baby and then she is singing oh mirror in the sky what is love, and then she is singing Nirvana... and her voice is so, so good. I wonder if she is going to really pursue voice, because she has a gift.
Mr. Curry folds his arms into his armpits and watches the girls. I watch him.
My living dog, Wolfgang, is freshly bathed. Hosed down and scrubbed clean. He presses against me and his eyes ask me to tell him he is OK. This is the job I do for the last twenty years for all creatures great and small of my family, and so I do it, I tell him, you are OK, Wolfie, you are more than OK. The corners of his mouth turn up, his tongue comes out and his eyes narrow so dramatically I restrain a laugh, I do not want to hurt his feelings, or end his love-eyes.
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