In His Room

Sometimes emotional moments sneak up on you. Birthdays, Christmas, pouring over old home videos, those are the ones you prepare for; those are the ones you see coming. Replacing sewer damaged carpet in the basement hardly sounds like something that would set off the waterworks. But, today, that's exactly what happened. And it wasn't really about the carpet. It was about moving stuff, his stuff.

My son moved out of the house over a year ago. At the time, I had trouble with the abruptness of the move; the fact that there was tension between us. But we worked through it. I know he's better off on his own. I know he had to move out to gain the independence and maturity that he's showing now. The trouble is, he has an awful lot of his stuff still hanging around. Most of it is piled up in his old room gathering dust, waiting for him to have a place big enough to store it. Usually, I just keep the door closed. But, today, I needed to move his stuff in order to have room to temporarily house other stuff from the rooms about to be re-carpeted.

As I walked around the room, hanging up clothes and pushing unwanted objects to the side, I spotted a few of his drawings. There was a sketch of a tennis shoe from several different angles. There was a pointillistic chalk piece of Charles Tillman in motion. There were reminders everywhere of his talent. But that wasn't what did it.

It was a teeny, tiny skateboard. I was gathering a few of his old toys when I stumbled on his collection of miniature skateboard paraphernalia. I remembered how much fun he had collecting the ramps, the stairs and the bridges. I remembered how many hours he spent playing with all the tiny replicas of the boards he dreamed of having in life-size versions. And, when I picked up one of those boards, my eyes misted over. Just a little.

He's a man now but, for just a moment, standing there in his old room with that tiny skateboard in my hand, he was my little boy.