where you are

School begins in a few days.   

Where exactly did summer go?

Why is it that something so very planned out feels unexpected once it actually arrives?   

The school start date loomed there all summer long, but now, just 48 hours ahead of us, school beginning feels like the ending of something that was meant to be endless ---summer-.  

I look at him and he at me.  His questions are, for the most part unanswerable in any intelligent way and to anyone else, they'd seem ridiculous, but to me, they are the most important, most weighty queries.   "What will you do all day without me?  Can I bring and then leave my stuffed animal sharks in the car so they can see where I go to school and can be there when I come out again, waiting to see me?  Will the dogs miss me when I'm not here?", He questions. I'm careful with my responses.  I long to baby him and I want to tell him just the right things, select the correct words; words to give him confidence and yet ones which will convey how much I'll miss him each day.

Because while he's away learning to multiply, I will be divided.

Everywhere he goes, I go too, just a piece of me, in his pocket or in the sticky bottom of his backpack, in the knot on his blue Converse, the collar of his shirt. the smudge on his cheek.   

I have attached myself, in just the tiniest but most permanent way, to my little boy and I suppose that it's the closest a female can ever get to being a male.

I'm crazy about my son.  My sun.