Barb picked up the phone, her voice a little sleepy, and asked if she could call me back after taking a minute to walk Jay back to his room. I said, yes, if she didn’t mind, could she please call me back (I was bristling and could barely restrain my annoyance. How could she put me off yet again?) I got a glass of water and waited a minute or so for the phone to ring back.

By the time I picked up the line again, something—angels of mercy, the hand of the Creator, or even the old man with the sickle himself—something had touched me. My hands, head and heart felt like a flutter as of feathers, and all my vituperation dissolved and floated upward like a mist, and I was engaged unknowingly in one of life’s sacred and true rituals.

On Route 60 bumping through Belmont, Barb drove the car like a swerving drunk, trying to hit every rainwater puddle at the side of the road. She and seven-year-old Jay cheered maniacally at each one. “Rooster tails,” she explained, almost as an aside, as water arc-ed up and out from the puddles, feathering the air. She and Jay cheered again, woo-hoo, the roadway entertainment an intimate joke that they shared. I envied them this zany closeness, and of course started plotting how I was going to create a similar madcap rapport with Zeke.
I made a few rooster tails while driving with him that week, but at five he was already canny and languid about the artifices of adult society. “Stop it mom,” Zeke said, with almost adolescent condescension, as I swerved and cheered. “You’re only doing that because Barb does, and it’s kind of dangerous.”