Spoke

T is fifteen, I think. He works silently, concentrated. He knows how to pop papaya and guava seedlings from plug trays and into four-inch pots. He knows how to water during the month without rain. He says he knows how to play football, and I think that in the fall I would like to go see one of his games.

His family lives on the same street as me. Mom and Dad go to work each day and his brothers and sisters, they work, too. T learned some new things today. What it means to strip a screw. How to get through a two by four with a Skillsaw that seems not to be strong enough. 

I stood on a ladder. He handed me bicycle rims from Bokah Bikes. I wired these together on top of two by fours attached to six by six posts that three sober drunks helped me to get upright two weeks ago.

The pergola is mostly a gift of materials, mostly a gift of assistance.

There are times when I doubt whether any of what I do has an effect. There are times I doubt whether I should have used affect instead. And there are times when I wonder whether a male cardinal can molt, whether this is even the right word. I wonder this because I saw what looked like a puffy gray cardinal in the rain today with a long tail that appeared to be red. And I believe molt is what happens when a snake sheds skin.

And now that we’re talking about this, I believe that molt can happen to me daily, that when I slow down, when I stand atop the ladder, when I ask T, “Does Soundcloud let you like the songs and then make decisions for you. Like Pandora. Or Spotify.” He says, “Yes.” A lot of his answers are yes or no. Sometimes he says, “I’m finished.”

To journey further I might ask why and how questions. Like how does it feel to be fifteen. Why does he think that I am growing all of this? How would he like to work? What would he like to do and why?

I wanted to paint a self portrait yesterday, to look at myself in the mirror and make my face look like something Jawlensky had done. I wanted the bright colors to combine in an expression of which not even I was aware. 

I mostly stayed inside. I never take days off, so yesterday I did.

Today, when I stood on the ladder above the unfinished pergola, I watched T smile for the first time, a smile that was almost a laugh. He struggled to get the Skilsaw through the two by four. Nothing is OSHA compliant at CRISP. His sawhorse was a black plastic pot, perhaps a super large pizza in circumference, so as the board slid, he gripped the saw harder and moved it up and down.

I said, “T’s a beast.” And he smiled big and wide. I said, “That blade’s old. Not so good. I was worried. But you got it.”

You ever see cheeks rise and know the power of the sky just before it rains? You ever see the way an angel holds birdseed outside my backdoor? You ever see two baby cardinals in the lower branches of dwarf tamarillo, while on the steps chicks, chicks you knew days after their shells cracked, now able to fly, now almost the size of full grown hens, in the middle, on the steps, eating what seed the blue jays knock from the angels outstretched hands.

When you witness all of this in the course of hours, consider these visions a whisper from God, a gift that you could not have seen unless you were right on time. And when the pergola is finished, take what must have once been a giant spool, the circumference of a double door were this a circle, and make a table, and know that when you say, “T, you’re a furniture maker now,” perhaps you have opened a space that the two of you can walk through together.