My Boy, he wrote today

Connect the dots
Up and down
Left to right
Round and round
Hold your pen tight
Tripod grip
static, dynamic
straight, slant
circular, angular
Abstract
that form slowly
into shapes
clear as day
Then transforms
into letters
Let's start with "A"
My little boy
grasps his pen
goes to the board
and writes
His brows are furrowed
in profuse concentration
His strokes are
quick and clumsy
The he finishes
with a flourish
His square looking
more like a tic-tac-toe
board with all the X's
But it does not matter
My little boy,
He wrote today.
And when we come home
he finds a pencil
holds it like a writer does
or so I think,
He goes to the clear blue
wall of his bedroom
and scribbles and doodles
circles, lines,
with all the wonder
and focus in his eyes.
This is why we do not
need the paintings of
Monet , Van Gogh or
the sonnets of Shakespeare
or poems of Edgar Allan Poe
We have our little boy
learning the ropes
exploring the wonder
of the pen, or crayon,
if you will,
and anything that it
writes on, for that matter.
Will he learn how to write
words like the immortal writers?
Will he learn how to
paint like the great artists?
I do not know.
This is the greatest mystery
Only the cosmos know
But what I do know
right at this very moment
in a million moments
in the universe,
My boy, he wrote today. :-)


Garret is 6 years old. His typically developing peers are writing full sentences and drawing their imagination on paper. He is still exploring the shapes of letters, learning one small stroke after another. He is not in a hurry. So why should I be? He is taking his time. So should I. Again, another hidden blessing. Only today did I realize and appreciate the wonder and magic of each hand stroke just to form a triangle or a square. To simply write involves a hundred different steps-to hold the pen just the right way, to follow broken lines and dots, and to practice, practice and practice a hundred thousand times. All of these and more to create the power of the written word. The greatest works of art begin from the smallest, simple details. How often have I disregarded the million small things and preferred the grandiose and magnanimous pointless outcomes? Today, again God spoke to me. He spoke to me through the beautiful, clumsy strokes of my little boy, Garret. Each breath, each stroke of the hand, each blink of an eye, each brow furrowed, each stride, sigh of relief, each single smile that breaks into laughter-- these are the little things that make us truly live. If I were given just 10 seconds so that Garret would understand my spoken or written word, I would tell him or write him this, "Thank you, my son for teaching me how to live my life, to appreciate your life, just as God wanted me to-- to see and be amazed at every single, minute and  beautiful detail that is you."

And so now, as I write this, I only say to the heavens, "My deepest gratitude."