Marvelous Milo

We celebrate the older son’s birthday today. He’s eleven.

I feel like a successful human being because I’ve managed to get him this far. I tried mightily to harm him at various playgrounds over the years, though not purposely, of course. He escaped with a stitch here and there and bumps on his noggin. And we’ve muddled through. His little brother is too tough to harm in any way, so my cares are not increased by the simple arithmetic of a brother added.

My son has that thing… a sort of internal glow that even others see emanating from his innards. His heart is good, and that trumps all other concerns. I will be pleased and sad to spring him on the world undiluted by supervision in a few years. The glow looks vaguely like the one that attracted me to his mother.

There will be little skinny friends frolicking by the dozen, smeared with cake and bug spray, and little cousins to tag along or sit padded by their diapers, watching. Aunts and Uncles and neighbors will gossip and attempt to allow things to happen, and grandmothers will dote and receive obeisance. The day will be a fabulous blur for him, and just a blur for his parents.

And then the clock will return to its quotidian desultory ticking, ever closer to the detonation of the bomb that all we parents set, that will blow our lives all to heck when he leaves us to be a man.

Happy birthday Milo.