32/100, This Newness

End of term and the children are a shock. Their long arms and legs such a surprise, I often catch myself wondering which one I’m looking at. Their skin burnished brown now by the southern sun, by the beach after school and shooting hoops in the evenings. I ruffle his hair at bedtime where the new born smell still lurks, grown faint this last decade but still I try to find it, strands of hair bleached white close to his scalp. The eldest has reached the apex of his childhood. I see him stretch in every direction, this body so new he hardly knows what to do with, this unease a strange new grace. The youngest clutches her year’s work to her chest and I forgive them for being so tired after school every day, for their bickering, the incessant snacks. So much of their lives lived out of my sight. Recall, almost, the early days of knowing everything about them. Or thinking it so at least, their inner lives grown certain now and how relieving it is to see them learning of life past my own limits. At times I would like it otherwise but they owe me nothing. Not clothes, not shelter, not food; not bed time stories or films late into the night; not morning pancakes or French toast. Love is not a thing to trade in hope of return. And school will start and they will bicker and I will feed them and we will tire of each other again, no longer startled by this newness.