Sure, yeah, he says. Whatever, his voice wincing and grateful. Dropping to his knees, a shy, heavy gesture, he scoops his hands into the sand and starts prodding, poking, plunging. I am remembering, making sense of things, remembering. My hands pull the sand up, let it go, plow deeper and deeper into the earth.
Friendship is a benefaction and a weight.
It is an instruction and a tool, a risk, a therapeutic, a happenstance, a philosophy. I must find the words to teach my son. Digging for water, digging for roots, I listen to the soft susurrus of earth hitting earth, then hear a burst of laughter nearby. It s the boy beside me, elbow-deep in the sand. The kid with the cap and a bucket full of sand, who is, for now, not lonely.