little boy birthdays

You would think I'm nuts.
You know how I am. With cake. With food. With anything.
Even if, for the second year in a row, I am irked that
I get less than a week's notice for such a cake request -
you know I can't not do it. I can't not take the creative challenge.

I almost didn't. Ro is not so little anymore.
Not the little boy
sitting on the steps with you,
while you were on a lunch break.
Not the little boy who was an only child then,
his sister barely formed
inside their mama.
He certainly wasn't this little boy,
the one who has two little ones
he is now big brother to.
The one who still tackles me with such great force as I come up the stairs
The one who has lost the baby-fat cheeks
and retains his great exuberance.

I'm not sure if he remembers you
If he knows why I am still in his life
If he knows why I look at the empty space on the floor
where you and I ate dinner one late work-night
Before they all lived there,
before the couch and the toys
and the empty space filled in

In the end, I had to make this cake -
there are so few times to really play,
to touch that pure fruitcake goofiness,
the intense crazed joy that is a little boy
telling me all about this "new star wars thing."

You would think I'm nuts.

.