He loves the dips to the street

He loves the dips to the street. The three to four inch change in elevation over a four foot span of sidewalk exhilarates him; he runs to get the fullest affect. The three inches leaves his heart just about where his throat ends up. He slows to a stop on the asphalt, laughs his grunty delight and then heads for the other side of the street, anticipating the parallel but opposite thrill, with more giggly expressions of an endorphin rush. His heart returns to its home and remembers its tactile search for wonder. There are leaves aplenty fallen and dried for the sole purpose of being crunched beneath his boots. He runs over a long stretch of blanketed concrete. But other leaves are too precious for destruction, in bright yellows and warm oranges, near enough to death to contain all the beauty of the world. These are rescued, hoisted and clutched with unrefined motor skills against his gut. At least until the red one is witnessed, not as large, but exquisite in rarity, three large pointed tips connected by tiny jagged edges. The hand and mind, unable to hold two things at once, reach out for the prize and the yellows and oranges fall a second fall.

“Come on Quinn,” I encourage him from 8 feet in advance. He responds to my tone and takes a few steps toward me until he reaches a crack in the sidewalk. The parkway tree that graces our shared sky with feather-light gold, has unleveled the sidewalk squares beneath. He stops, looks up at me and smiles as though I should know and then lifts one foot slowly up the elevation. He plants it and bounds forward with another guttural laugh. Before he reaches me, though, he stoops again to separate the beauty of sight from the beauty of sound.

I step back to take his hand and move him along, but he does not want to be hurried, so I pick him up and put him on my shoulders. He ducks, pressing his chest against the top of my head, and giggles as his cheek brushes our golden sky. As the gold becomes distant and the sky turns blue, he sits up and begins tapping the top of my head with open palms, as though my cranium is a hollow drum. I enter his musical exploration and clack my tongue each time he bangs. He begins to coo what I imagine is a song, and I suddenly notice layers of music around us. Birds of all kinds are bidding their farewells to warm rays of sunlight soon to abandon them. I am happy and feel in tune with him and us with nature.

As we leave the oak canvassed sidewalks of our street and head toward the building-flanked rushing traffic, a vision out of the corner of my eye cuts at my heart. I turn my head to look and find only an empty lot. Where did it go? What was it? I turn forward to continue our walk and his leg again swings into my peripherial vision. Below my left hand's grasp of his ankle: Quinn's foot – tiny and delicate, little piggies sucking a stuffed sow – encased in a brown leather boot fashioned after a work boot with white stitching and a long shoe string. It felt like innocence and promise: the baby boy becoming a life.

And as these feelings sunk in, I recognized the lack of harmony between his drumming and our nature. His cooing now less a song and more a sonnet; his hands not drumming but patting. And I remembered four or five times in the last week when he patted me on my back, or on the crease behind my knee, when he was happy. As the music faded and I realized these were love pats, he clutched the sides of my head with his elbows at my ears, his tiny palms on my temples, his ring fingers brusing the outskirts of my eyebrows, and he pressed his stomach into the back of my head, laying his chest atop my cranium and softly planted his cheek just above my forehead. With refined motor skills, his fingers clutched me against his gut. His inner thighs tighened slightly and with his elbows and cheek squeezing me and he let out a long, singular coo: the fullest and most pure sonnet ever performed.