August 7: Chasing My Son, Sharon Olds, "My Son the Man"

My son is five-years-old and thinks he can do anything.  Jump from bridges.  Ride bikes down mountains.  Go to a restaurant by himself and order dinner.  Stay up until 4 a.m., watching marathons of Fairly Odd Parents.  Get a job.  Buy a motorcycle.

I have no idea why it's so important for kids to want to grow up, but they do.  They can't wait to leave childhood behind for the manacles of adulthood.  Adults, on the other hand, spend much of their time being wistful about long-gone childhoods.  It's a vicious circle.

The Sharon Olds poem for tonight is about a boy trying to escape the grasp of a mother.

Saint Marty isn't quite ready to let his son bungee jump off a cliff just yet.

My Son the Man

by:  Sharon Olds

Suddenly his shoulders get a lot wider,
the way Houdini would expand his body
while people were putting him in chains.  It seems
no time since I would help him put on his sleeper,
guide his calves into the shadowy interior,
zip him up and toss him up and
catch his weight.  I cannot imagine him
no longer a child, and I know I must get ready,
get over my fear of men now my son
is going to be one.  This was not
what I had in mind when he pressed up through me like a
sealed trunk through the ice of the Hudson,
snapped the padlock, unsnaked the chains,
appeared in my arms.  Now he looks at me
the way Houdini studied a box
to learn the way out, then smiled and let himself be manacled.

Abracadabra!  All grown up!