growth chart

we stayed the four days of our surprise christmas visit in the home of the original supernatural nephew. he is nine and we have watched him grow up in intervals- measured in months and years. he leaps forward six months at a time on skinny legs like the ones that carried me through my own rickety small years. his interior life is a mystery, but it is clear his mind is constantly packed with the suffering in the world around him. he is what some might call a worrier, but not the anxious, helpless sort. he thinks about the awfulness in the world, big and small, and then begins to roll things over in his mind, looking for places to claw his way in and fix something. this is part of what it means to some to be supernatural. he has a constant urge to rescue, to save, to take on burdens never meant for such small shoulders.

i see this fresh when he and i wait in the car for his mother- my sister- to get snow melt from the store. we are on this errand because of his sharply focused concern for his renegade grandfather. this particular grandfather, father to the child's mother, our baby sister and to me, is prone to fits of lawnmowing at noon on the hottest day of the year without water. his snow shoveling techniques require similar levels of danger and excess. the supernatural child has been mulling over the possibilities of grandfather + icy driveway + recently discussed eye problems in said grandfather + nine year old's inability to lift a crumpled grandfather after fall on ice. the other side of this equation always contains at least one grandfather unconscious and possibly freezing to death on the driveway. and so the snow melt and barely concealed threats to the grandfather from his daughters about what will happen if he attempts his own driveway maintenance.

but when the child and i sit outside in the car waiting for his mother he expresses concern over a friend who might be in court soon. his classroom had a mock trial recently and he was, by all available accounts, a spectacular lawyer. by the time his mother returns to the car, he has convinced himself he could be a real lawyer, rescue this innocent victim of circumstances. he says as much to his mother and this is when i see what it takes to raise a child with the shadow of the supernatural hovering over him. she does not mince words.

"you are not a lawyer," she says flatly. she has had to talk him down from other things. "i know," he counters, "but i think..." she does not let him think long. it is not that she thinks he can't someday be a lawyer. it's that she has to convince him he can't be one by next month. because he thinks he can. "have you finished high school? have you finished college? then there's law school. and the bar. that's a really complicated test. have you passed the missouri bar?" he concedes that he has not, but is surprisingly undaunted by her suggestion that he's not going to be a lawyer in time for this case. he answers everything with "not yet". he is not deterred. not a bit. his mother ends the discussion by telling him the discussion is finished, that they have said all that needs to be said on the subject. his mother is not one to be taken lightly. he is quiet a while. "i still think i could do it," he says quietly, more to himself than anyone else. and although i know about the years yet ahead of school, of college, law school, the bar, i am not at all sure i would be able to say anything to dissuade him.

the night before we return to new york he says he has a gift for me. i am half asleep in the bedroom downstairs. the sweetie is brushing his teeth. the child has been down to tell us goodnight and goodbye because we will leave early, before he is awake. i know he has gone back upstairs but i hear voices outside the door and the sweetie opens the door to let the child in. he walks quietly to the side of the bed. he is rumpled and he holds something white in his hand. he has made something for me. i take it, hug him, then watch him walk out the door quietly. what he has given me was once a sheet of typing paper. he has folded it in half and stapled it along two edges to form a pocket. there is a paper clip across the open edge standing in for a clasp. on the front he has drawn two knitting needles in soft pencil. for keeping my knitting supplies.

in his whole life he has seen me on maybe twenty occasions. i live halfway across the country in a place he has visited two or three times. but because he is of the supernatural sort he knows differently than others. i know when we drive back to new york there will be a post office full of packages waiting for us, christmas presents from the family we snuck up on. but here is this paper pocket i have laid out on the table, spread with all my knitting things- scissors, stitch markers, yarn, needles. the supernatural children these days tend to drag along a sackful of loosely developed skills. some haphazard flying. a little bit of mind reading. maybe a lazily developed communication with a few animals, most of them domesticated anyway. dilettantes. dabblers. but this child has focused his abilities. he studies. he learns those he loves like some folks learn poetry. and even though he's still a small child, can't possibly know just yet what it is he wants to save us all from, it's clear he knows how to begin.