The Littlest Things

I got back yesterday. The boy bear was gone off to his new job and new apartment in Maryland. I took down posters from his bedroom wall he didn't want any more. Tried to decide which if any of the multitude of youth sports trophies to keep and which to toss. He would get them for everything he did. He didn't put them in the box of things he wanted us to store. Found a published book from their middle school years that was a collection  made by their poetry teacher of the middle school kids. This was his:

"Today you become a man!"
he exclaimed,
and chuckled.
I laughed too
even though I didn't get it
like it was a quote from a book
I hadn't read,
He seemed to bring it back
from his vast memory.
He watched me through his weary eyes
timeworn and kind.
He looked down on me,
one of the only people that could do so,
and smiled.
He handed me the electric drill.
My eyes widened.
I was seven.

-Chris McNay

I'd fake yell behind them the first time they would squeeze the rigger on the drill. The cub scouts were making sort of abstract wooden animals and I was giving them a taste of power tools under closely watched supervision of course.
And finding this, about me, kind of made me choke up yesterday in the nearly empty room.
His room was next to the kitchen and he had rice paper screens on a window in between. He always wanted the kitchen light on at night, even as a college student home for the summer (even with a guest with him for the night). We can turn the light out now.