December 13: A Handful, Serial Killer, "Bow Rye"

This is not my son.

My eight-year-old son is a handful.  All the time.  When he got off the school bus this afternoon, he was grim and determined.  He threw his backpack into my car, got in, and said, "I don't even care.  I like being risky."  According to my daughter, he was telling the other kids that he wanted to be a serial killer when he grows up.

Yes, that bothers me.  But, after he got home and calmed down, he was sweet and funny.  When I gave him a piece of pizza, he made the sign of the cross and said grace.
He's a mystery to me.  Both of my kids are.

My son was about two when I wrote this poem . . .

Bow Rye

by:  Martin Achatz

My son leaves off consonants when he speaks, too busy to articulate words the way the offspring of a poet should at the age of two.  My car, a raspberry jam-colored Ford, becomes, on my son's tongue, a dead dar.  The milk he sucks down in his crib is his bowel a meal.  At McDonald's, he eats fry anyoo.  Fries and ice cream.  The motorcycle across the street, a coonshawwa.  When my father cuts the grass, he pushes an own kowler.  If my son wants company, he orders my wife, Mumma she, until she sits beside him on the couch.

Today, after my son takes his afternoon nyeah, my brother, Un Pow, will take him for a bow rye.  As the pontoon slides into the water, my son, swaddled in a sherbet preserver, will point at the dark line of teas along the shore, at the schools of small fees darting through the shallows.  He'll hear the motors of other boats, mistake them for pains in the sky.  And when the wind hits him in the face, the spray of the waves dampens his hair as they cruise into deep water, my son will jump, wave, scream, laugh.  Speechless.  Unable to say what he feels.  Not knowing a word big enough.

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