Grey Sky

A moment with a mother-son pair and the changing weather.

I hate putting genres to my stories.  I don't think this fits in children's, but it involves a child and childlike exploration, so that's where I put it.

 

I wrote this a year or two.  I pulled over to my old soccer field on my way home from school and wrote in my trunk with the back door open and the music playing softly.  Wrote as I watched the sky.  I think it's a short, sweet story.

 

Picture credit to     Ashley Jouhar.

 

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“Why is the sky blue?” he asked me last week. I told him his science teacher would know and that I didn't. I smiled at him and told him that I certainly thought it was pretty. He looked contemplative for the rest of the day. When he came home from school the next day he was toting a picture he had painted of a pink school.

 

“It looks like sunset,” I complimented affectionately. He frowned, watching his piece with three fingers cupping his chin.

 

“It's not,” he replied. His stormy eyes were brimming with thoughts that intrigued me more than I would care to admit. What was my boy up to?

 

“Can we hang it up?” he asked me. He turned to watch me with hopeful but subdued eyes. I smiled wide at him. He had never requested his art be showcased before—it was always my idea.

“Sure thing, kiddo.” I gingerly lifted the painting to an empty place on the wall. He shook his head, growling like a little monster and beaming his teeth in a 'fierce' smile.
 

“In the window,” he clarified. With an excited grin he assisted me in taping the picture to the uppermost paret of the window. The painting looked bright with the sun coming in through the glass and lighting it from behind. His smile was filled with pride. “It should look like a dark, red sky at night. Pink and red instead of blue and black.”

 

This time I had the prideful smile. That was my boy, changing the way the world worked starting with our own living room.

 

 

 

“Momom, why is the sky gray?” he asks me this week. He is definitely in his 'why?' phase. His favorite sentence structure is the question. At this point I think he's going to grow up to be a Unitarian Universalist. He has some pretty sophisticated questions that I find leave me with anything but sophisticated answers, like now. I really should be more poised with this.

 

“It means it's going to rain,” I answer. I rest against the tree trunk and smile up with a long, loud sigh. He giggles at my lengthy exhale and grins up at the sky from where he rests leaning against my front. He's such a squirm. I love him for it. He's mine.

 

“I like it more grey. Even more than pink and red,” he adds. I laugh one of my low, deep laughs that he loves to feel coming from my body. My smile grows as he continues speaking. “It reminds me of my eyes.”

 

I nod and squeeze him tight. “You're right. The sky is a nice grey-blue color, like your eyes.”

 

He squirms at the compliment while smiling over at me with pleased eyes. He reaches up as far as he can toward the sky and then trails wiggling fingers to the earth. When he goes to repeat it he asks, “What am I doing, Momom?”

 

I laugh and make an exaggerated motion of shrugging my shoulders. “What are you doing?”

 

“I'm raining!”

 

“Uhoh! Does that mean we should go inside?”

 

He shakes his head firmly, grinning from ear to ear. “It's not storming!”

 

When he looks to me again his eyes are cuing me into my role.

 

I zip out my arm and make a loud booming sound.

 

“A storm is coming!” I cry out and cower behind my other arm, stilling moving the other with lightning speed and the thunder sound.

 

He throws himself over me and tries to leash his giggles. While he is resting over me—protecting me—light rain begins to fall. He grows giddy.

 

“Rain! Momom, let's rain dance!” He struggles to get off me and runs on bare feet to the center of the field. I know he never quite understood the designed purpose of the “rain dance” ritual but I always find his version so beautiful that I don't bother correcting him. Instead, I join him in his play.

 

We dance in a circle together, holding hands and chanting. He taught me after his first week of school how to chant in self-invented languages. I predict that in our lifetimes he will be teaching many things, a good number of them to me.

 

I see a light flash in the distance and a deep but soft rumbling counts later. We hurry inside to look at his painting while it rains and storms. I predict it will soon be time to put pots and pans on our heads and prance around.

 

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[Emily B]

This made me smile. My children teach me many lessons. I predict that learning will go on for many years to come.