A Child's Wish

         My husband is napping. He rises every morning in the quiet dark, hours before M or I begin to stir. Because of this he often drops into sleep in the late afternoon when he sits down, or early in the evening if we are sitting together to watch a movie. M and I joke about it. We know he won't make it through any movies we start. When we hear his faint snore begin to issue from the heavy head, when we see the softened mouth and the crazily angled head, we nudge each other and smile.
        Sometimes we wake him.
        On this particular afternoon M feels that regardless of Der's waking hour, it is simply far too early. "Hey dad, wake up!"
        "What, what happened?"Der stirs and looks blearily around, warm from the stoked fire, from dreams.
        "The war's over!" M shouts, apparently, the first thing that comes to mind.

        The "War on Terror" has been going on since his first year of life. He was born in the year 2000. He has only known a world and a country at "war" with everyone who looks to be a threat, an abstract war on terror in which anyone could be an enemy. When M was eight, during the election year, he said, "Bush has been the president my whole life," and it seemed a long time.   During his lifetime homeland security became a household term, the war on terror justified the detention of people without a trial.
       "I wish that could happen, a person falls asleep and a war is over. I wish it were that easy. You wake up and say,'Hey, the war is over,' " he says to himself.
       "Is it over?"he asks me.
     Der, lion-like, smiles sleepily, happy to let me field that question, and lets his eyelids drop again.

The Last Day of School

       My step-son is a beauty. Each week, when he returns to the house he flies through the door chattering like a bird. He drops his lunch by the sink and his school bag by the table and picks up his bass guitar or his ukelele. For the next 40 minutes he follows me around the house from task to task--do I like this song or this song? Which bass-line is better? Do you recognize this? He wonders about the date of the first time a man walked on the moon; how many flags are there on the moon?; when did Kurt Cobain die? M wonders about racism, which soccer player is leading in goals scored for the European Championship tournament; who will pick him up today; why girls don't realize that just by wearing pants they are cross-dressing--but it's weird for boys to wear makeup?
         Today M dressed for the last day of school like the alternative rock stars that so inspire him. It is the same outfit he wore on the first day of sixth grade, nine months ago. This morning he dresses in a white linen shirt, a tie, a suit vest, and black skinny jeans and his black adidas sneakers.
         He smooths his hair down and asks me to help him put on mascara. As far as he is concerned, eye makeup is a necessary part of this outfit, a break from his usual jeans and soccer jersey. Just like the first time he devised this outfit complete with makeup, we don't say anything except to compliment his unique sense of style. We don't have time for eye shadow or that would be put on too. As I apply the mascara, I comment on how long his eyelashes are. He squints, squeezing his eyes together (It tickles!)printing little tracks of the still-wet mascara on his lower eye-lid. "Well, it looks more like The Cure this way," he comments, tilting his head and inspecting himself.
         "Do you want to keep it?"Considering the effect, he shakes his head."To remove it, just put a little lotion under each eye, applied with a q-tip, then get your finger wet and wash it off," I instruct. He follows my directions inspecting himself, first just his face, and then in the full-length mirror.  He straightens his vest and smooths his hair. We realize that the tie is sticking through the bottom of his vest and M decides it looks silly.
         "I know a trick," I tell him. "There's this secret pocket," I fold the tie up under the vest and slide it in between two of the buttons in his shirt.
         "Really?"
          I smile and shake my head. "If you take your vest off just pull it out from the bottom of your shirt where I've tucked it in."
         Suddenly we realize we are late, that we had not budgeted time for "getting ready." We move quickly into high gear--I put the mini pizzas, still cooling, into a plastic ziploc bag, wash a handful of cherries, pull out a frozen yogurt tube from the freezer and put them all into his lunch sack.
M hefts his incredibly heavy backpack up with one hand and slides his arms through each of the straps.
         He grabs his lunch and patiently waits by the car while I rush around the house looking for my keys. 'Just my luck to drop him off late on his last day,' I tell myself).
          In moments, we are off--not too late--he'll still get there on time, but not as early as M likes. He is like his dad, he wants to be 20 minutes early for everything. I glance at him as we drive down Greeley toward I-5, singing along to the Red Hot Chili Peppers, while intermittently asking me questions about the news or the rest of the week. Beyond his young, flawless face the Willamette river glistens and the buildings downtown spark in the morning light. We flow past the Fremont bridge, the Broadway bridge  and merge onto the Interstate. We can see the city unfolding before us into the perfect possibility of a new day.
          As we pull up to the school he sighs again about being late. He gets out of the car, waves, smiles and confidently joins the stream of students entering the school, already looking the part of the seventh grader, and I marvel at my luck to be a part of his life.