Regular Life

“That’s vewy dangewous,” Ben said.

“Yes, it can be dangerous, but you don’t need to be scared of it,” I replied.

If you’ve ever been in or near the Dallas metro area, then you know that spots of natural beauty are difficult to find. Many hikes sponsored by a local outdoor group meander along tree-flanked streams overshadowed by towering buildings.

There are a few oases if one knows where to look. My in-laws happen to live in one of those spots. Every oasis, however, extracts its own price, and this one is no exception.

Their subdivision is old enough to have large trees, and the streets are not laid out in a perfect grid. One gets the feeling of a stereotypical “Sunday drive” while navigating the curvy streets under overhanging hardwoods. While most of the houses feature garage access via alleys in the back, homes on their side of the street have driveways out front, for one big, wet reason.

Behind their house is a small lake. It is home to ducks, fish, and for a tragically brief period, a domesticated swan named Ty. A large cypress tree looms at the water’s edge, one low branch extending on an almost perfectly horizontal plane, its leaves nearly touching the water. A three-story office building and a daycare stand on the opposite side of the lake, shattering any illusion that one is out in the country. Nevertheless, it is a pleasant break from the norm.

Tuesday night I had gone to the in-laws’ house after work, and walked around the back yard with Ben while my mother in-law cooked up her delicious homemade fried chicken and mashed potatoes. We don’t eat fried chicken often, but when we do, hers is the preferred bird.

The biggest challenge comes immediately after walking out the back door. The section of the yard adjacent to the patio ends at a four-foot wall that drops to the ceramic tile around the pool. There is no, “just let Ben out to play and watch him through the windows.” In fact, whoever goes out with him pretty much follows him every inch of the way. We do this because head injuries aren’t quite as funny as Crushed Head Faeda (from “Simon of Space”) would have us believe.

Then, of course, there’s the pool itself. There are not many two-year old children who can be trusted to not fall in and drown. Okay, none.

Ben, who tends to narrate everything he does, informed me of the various dangers we faced. The pool and a pile of bricks both qualified as “vewy dangewous.”

The pool, of course, is great fun to a toddler with adult supervision, but not so much without. His Grammy, who often takes him outside, has done a great job of instilling that in him. The large bricks stacked next to the back side of the shed could bring on a good finger-mashing. After Ben warned me about the bricks, we walked around the shed to the other side.

“That’s a wheelbawwow,” Ben said.

There it was, a True Temper wheelbarrow, turned upside down to prevent rain gathering. Ben walked right up to it and started spinning the wheel.

“Don’t spin the wheel, please, Ben. That’s dirty,” I said.

Ben obediently took his hand off the tire and started walking away from the shed. What a good boy.

What had I just done? Who was I becoming? Somehow I had grown from a crawdad-catchin’, dirt-diggin’, playin’ in the rain boy to a stick-in-the-mud man.

That stops right now.

“Wait, Ben. You can spin that wheel if you want. We’re going to wash your hands when we get inside.”

He turned around and looked at me, then the wheelbarrow. I hoped he hadn’t already lost interest.

“It’s okay if you want to spin that wheel,” I said.

Without a word, Ben quickly stepped to it and gave it a whirl. It stopped after only two revolutions. He gave it a few more tries, then grew bored with it. When we went inside to eat, I was happy with my progress. I had let my boy be a boy.

As he ate his chicken, which he would not touch until Grammy put gravy on it, he chimed in every two or three minutes with, “This gwavy is vewy good.”

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