Father And Son

My son is busy. He holds a binder in his hands that was given to him at school. On the back he has affixed a photograph of himself.

The author page.

He explains this as if I should already know. Next he works on the title before beginning the body of the story. He has plans to scan the result into his mother's computer and then print several copies. Tomorrow, he imagines he will go to the Barnes and Noble and put them on display.

Later, he collects all the books in his room. He arranges his furniture to create an entrance to his new "library". He cuts out ten long strands of paper and writes "librari Kard 50 sents" carefully on each one of them.

When he's finished, he runs down the stairs to the mud room and puts on his boots and jacket. He calcualtes that if he sells all ten, he will have plenty of money to buy a toy at Target.

An hour later, he returns with the same handful of papers and frown on his face. I try not to laugh at his energetic entrepreneurial spirit.

Sometimes my son plays with old cell phones. He holds them up to his ear and paces back and forth disrupting the quite of the living room. His eyes become tense and he speaks in commanding tones. Occasionally he clicks on the icons on the screen, and tries to access the Internet.

The other evening my wife asked me if I wanted to watch a movie. I replied that I was too busy working on my manuscript of poetry, calculating next years financials for the office, and I had a few pages to return.

As I reached for my cell phone, I thought of my son tucked away soundly in his bed. On the good days, I think of his imitation as a form of flattery. On the bad, I wonder if it is me who is copying him. Maybe we both are childlike with an inflated sense of our own abilities.

Although we sometimes dip our toes and test the water, more often we jump in head first with no idea of what awaits below the surface.

And we occasionally leave the house with high experctations only to return shortly with a frown on our faces,

and little to show for our efforts.