Handiwork

When Jack burrowed into my lap for a back rub, it initially felt like one more request in an entire day that had been hands-on.  One activity after another as the sleet sluicing the windows iced our cooped-up afternoon in early twilight. 

My thoughts were already skipping ahead to the algebra of the refrigerator, trying to fashion an answer to the looming dinner equation.  But here was this boy, shrugging out of his robot t-shirt, leaning into the trust of my touch.

Jack’s smooth stretch of spine is both timeline and template.  I remember how it glowed in the ghostly otherworld of the ultrasound monitor.  How it felt as I soothed his swaddled self, rocking us both across months of 3 a.m. thresholds.    

Breathe, I told him.  Breathe, I told myself, as I traced the familiar Braille of his freckled nape, the fragile wings of shoulder blades.

I closed my eyes and surrendered to the memory of the countless Saturday nights my grandmother offered me a dime to scratch her back before she tucked herself into the twin bed beside mine.  I remember comparing my Lanz flannel to her blue silk nightgown, wishing for her elegance by osmosis.  Feeling her smile in the slope of her shoulders.  Inhaling her signature Shalimar, which still smells like home to me.

Past and present twined under my fingertips as Jack bowed into my arms.  An unexpected namaste in the gray terrain of my mood.  The privilege of being trusted to hold someone in my hands.