Beginnings

Gideon constantly talks about his 'fishter'. (Sister) Today I heard him instructing his little brother, "Maddox, no hitting baby fishter. Baby fishter is a girl like mommy. No hitting. O.K. Maddox?" He proceeded to tell his little-wide eyed pupil how babies grow in the tummies of mommies. I, once again, sat down and explained that baby Jubilee is not growing in my tummy but in my heart and that someday soon I get to fly in a big airplane to get her. That perked their interest and they started zooming around the kitchen crashing their planes into each other.

A little later in the afternoon I found Gideon in the library looking at the pictures from his birth. I could just see the wheels in his mind grinding away. His four-year-old mind is trying to wrap around birth, beginnings, adoption. Big topics for such a little guy. I wrote a poem about his discoveries. It's still a work in progress but I thought I'd post what I have. I am calling it 'Beginnings.'


You have just learned
that you started out smaller

and smaller still
than your stuffed up bear.

Small as a crack
in a sun-soaked seed.

You look at my belly,
run your fingers along the pock

of stretch marks,
the fault lines,

displaced surface breaking
like rocks in your hand.

We look at pictures,
the aftermath of battle.

You are bloodied and puffed up,
stretched like a long vowel,

your mouth fumbling with sound,
limbs free falling through thin air,

the nurse holding a light to you eye,
retina retracting in terror,

cord coiled on your abdomen,
ready to snap it’s head, strike.

You ask me if it hurt worse
than a bee sting

you already know, the whites of your eyes
bloated and bogging in their sockets,

grip tightening around the album,
knuckles paled and clamped like a locked jaw.

All day you carry the book
as a badge on your arm.

When I enter your room that night,
after the sun has conceded to shadows,

blonde hair spills over the
photos, moonlight over trenches,

the line of your face is brazen
and unyielding:

a soldier poised
for war.