kiwords

Lately I've been worried, a bit, about the neighborhood. Specifically, about the kids in the neighborhood, and how they are being rotten to my perfect little snowflakes.

Seriously, the boys kept coming home angry, with stories of terrible treatment. Or came home repeating things I did NOT want to hear coming out of their mouths. The worst one of all was the time Raphael came inside and repeated a racial epithet he'd heard being tossed around, and my head spun around and I vomited pea soup and it was not pretty.

So from my perspective, the tree-lined street outside was looking sort of ominous. Seedy and dangerous and murky. In quiet moments I would try to imagine how we could move to a different, nicer, kinder, neighborhood. (Hint: any plan that begins, "So we win the lottery..." is not a plan. It is a fantasy.)

Tonight Clay was at a meeting, so after dinner it was just me and the kids. The boys quickly disappeared outside, and Sophia took to pointing at the door and cooing piteously. She loves to be outside, and since my choices were doing the dishes or trailing her in the golden late afternoon light, I obliged her.

Sophia could spend all day wandering around our street, I swear. She runs up and down the ramp to our deck. She picks up rocks and throws them. She pokes plants. She falls down and scrambles back up. Her knees are perpetually scabbed up.

As I meandered behind her, the girls who were playing next door came running over, shrieking, "the BABY!" They ached to pick her up and mother her, but she would have nothing to do with that. So they followed her around and tried to convince her to give them hugs. She snubbed them thoroughly, and they only adored her more.

A boy from up the street wandered past with Tre, and they stopped to chat. For some reason, this kid started telling me all about how his dad was a weight-lifting champion in high school, and how he almost died in a terrible car accident at 16, and how bravely he fought his way back to health. It was very sweet, the way he bragged on his dad, even if he did go on so long that I nearly faked a heart attack to get away.

Sophia trotted up the sidewalk, clutching a tennis ball. Every so often, she would FLING it with all her might, sending it flying a good two or three feet away. The next door neighbor boy, about 13 years old, was skateboarding, and whenever he sailed by the bouncing ball, he would lean down and scoop it up. Then he stopped and handed it back to Sophia, and she would take it, both of them wearing extremely serious expressions. Then he would hop back on his board and push off, and she would ratchet back her arm, dimpled elbow to her ear, ready to throw again.

She and I came to the corner yard, where the kids all congregate. All the usual suspects were there, including two of our three boys (Raphael was riding his bike, and streaked past periodically, yammering at me about a ramp they were building. I only realized later that he was pilfering 3 inch screws from his dad's work bench in the garage). I knew most of the kids' names, save two girls. It took me a while to realize that one of the girls was a statuesque blond, all ripe curves and flirty looks. She tossed her hair and shot looks at different boys, laughed and exclaimed at anyone not paying enough attention to her. She was both intoxicated by her feminine powers and completely unaware of just how powerful she was.

Tre hung around the edges of this group, nearly killing himself in the effort not to look at her. I worried a bit that he might walk straight into the path of an oncoming vehicle, so determined was he not to notice.

I stood there, outside the gaggle of kids, observing the sweet and silly young beauty of it all.

I absolutely right. This is a dangerous crowd.

We have GOT to move.