A Tempest Time

The storm came through in early October and leaving behind flooded streets and overflowing the banks of the river all along route 44.

The morning was foggy, a week past Ian, and hanging just above the tallest grass.

Driving west we saw a young deer, a buck, still growing antlers, making his way through the water near the draw bridge, leaping and moving fast looking for dry land.

The day warned and the games began, the coach was grumpy and I did not get it since the team was winning the game.

Aiden stole home and made it by a mile, no need to slide, all amiles he retreated ot the dug out.

(he wanted to pitch but they played him in the outfield, shagging fly balls and robbing home runs.)

Driving home we listened to Tom Petty and I drove on as he asked me about the lyrics, then he asked me if I thought that the deer had mede it across the flooded part of the woods?

I often wonder when I look at him, what is going on between his ears and what feelings lodge inside his heart as he runs from one impulse to the next.

Him, with those eyes that dart across the room from one place on the wall to the next, running legs chasing the ball that he hit himself.

Seems to me that he hjas had that same look his whole life, like he is listening to things only he can hear.

Running on some unseen internal fuse, no time ot waste, beginning over and over again and again, until there is nothing left and he is forced to find something new.

He was hard for me to understand when he was younger and he is hard to understand now,

He wants everyone to know that he is here, to be loved and to be told that he has done well.

Then come the mental tempest storms and we face off because I know things that he does not and I have to help him understand things that he has never thought of.

I remember when he was little and he would get to the end of the slide and instead of getting up he would just lay there and wait for someone to pick him up, staying on the ground and staring up at the sky.

Now he is all over here and all over there and then back again once more, endlessly looping, and still looking for what he wants to see.

Being young, you crumble under unfamilair weight and cry over precieved unfair demands, citing the lack of same on others.

But then there is me shaking my head and reminding you that what you need is not the same as others.

Once the uncoordinated child and now you have grown and have become so much better, such an accomplished athlete, all style and ease and achieveing things I never came close too.

In the evenings, I concern myslef with the way his life is going and how long I have before someone figures out that I am close to drowning and to wonder if the look in some of their eyes is one of sympathy or one that says the plan ios to leave me on my own in order that I learn lessons that have been so long in coming.

(think of all the times that I treid to explain and of all the times the given explanation had no impact at all.)

I wonder if he still thinks about that deer splashing through the flood waters and then disappearing into the woods?

T. S. Deary

10/11 – 12/7/22