course you do

So many things. This alternating incredible irritation and then delight and joy and all things good.

How one day can be thrown like bad dice because the weather is variable and all I can do is lay on the floor trying not to sit up with my ambitions because I will surely pass out, and the ambulance screams up the street so I can't even count dust motes in peace, or the doorbell rings and it's door-to-door sales instead of packages and I have the parquet pressed in the side of my face, and then this simple translation that I'd said I'd do as a favor turns out to be exactly the kind of writing I hate to read, and why, why. I should have a cave somewhere.

And then how I can be thrown into bliss because my friend sent me a funny e-mail in the morning and work went well and the sun is still up at 6 pm and I go to the wine bar to meet Friar while Squire is home writing a paper on Einstein and Dusan comes in and says hey, and then this woman I know b/c her daughter went to 1st grade with Squire and she buys a liter of wine in the bottle of water I just watched her drink outside and we do the smile nod where maybe she doesn't know where she knows me from, quite. And then we go home and Friar makes fish and peppers and then we play cards, and then board games.

On Monday Squire got dressed in his winter coat and I said no maybe it was time for a jacket so he put on his jacket but it was tight. Sometimes I put on clothes from last year only to realize that My How You've Grown continues even into your forties. His reaction was about the same as mine: OH NOES. Then he started crying because he looked like a "dork pencil". I remember the story about my cousin who didn't want to go to school one day because he had a giant zit on the end of his generous nose.I let Squire stay home.

I thought I wouldn't recognize puberty, that we would be too caught up in everything else and that I might mistake the symptoms of one thing for another, but if you are crying because you look like a dork pencil then that is actually totally recognizable to me. All I can say is that first of all, at least it is not pink satin Miss Piggy sneakers that seemed so cool when you bought them, before they got spit on. And also: screw them, you know? Those shoes were cool. Being awesome is simultaneously tempered and built by people too stupid to understand who you are.

And who you are, if you're lucky, will be a person whose greatest irritations in life are people who don't know the difference between "it's" and "its" and don't know why that's a good thing to know; and whose greatest pleasures in life are watching people grow into adults, and seventies television references, and the last cigarette before bed, and more than can be summarized in words like these.

Comments

[tuckova]

JV: TOTALLY. I'm driven by hormones and the weather to a degree that is disturbing. The main difference between now and 16 is that now I realize that it is not really the end of the world, but the beginning of a new moon or a change in air pressure. Still FEELS like the end of the world, though.

[ozma]

Many times I know why the day is a bad dice day but sometimes...it is strange. I don't have the slightest idea.

The dice also gets thrown during the day.

I'm trying to grow up and then hope I won't grow so much. Maybe this is impossible.

And I have to admit I got a little heartache for your sweet boy.