he has been talking about visiting for a while, telling anyone who will listen that he will be traveling to brooklyn. he has been whispering it into phones, giggling about it with other children, telling strangers when the opportunity arises. i am foolish enough to think he wants to see me, to see the giant uncle. he tells us on the phone he can't wait and i believe him.
but when i open the door and he steps inside he does not see me standing right there in front of him. he does not see the uncle who is, to him, as tall as any tree. he sees only the low brown dog and the dog sees him. they run down the long hall toward each other and swirl into a cloud of barking and childshriek and scrunched up rugs. the newer supernatural nephew says the dog's name about seven hundred times and the dog, absolutely beside himself with so much attention at such a completely reachable level, leaps and barks and is beyond overjoyed.
now, i know the child has been trying out sidekicks. this has been going on a while. i know he is looking for the sort of things all supernatural folk look for- bravery, loyalty, cuddliness. and surely it is not difficult to find two of those characteristics in the same person. good folks tend to be good all around. but it is near to impossible to find all three anywhere at all unless you're looking at a dog.
over the course of the week the dog follows the child around and the child follows the dog. they are close enough in size and similar enough in squirminess and energy that they do not seem to tire of each other. they like the same soft, fluffy toys, the same throwable things. their tiny bodies make the same unimaginably heavy clomping sounds on the wide wood stairs up to the bedrooms. they stand at the railing on the second floor and stare down onto the tops of the people who usually loom over them. they like the second floor heat register, flat and heavy iron, lifting their hair and tickling their bellies with warm air from time to time. and if the child could curl up with his tail over his nose at bedtime, he would.
i am not sure the supernatural nephew has chosen a new sidekick. there is the great distance between where he is and where the small dog is. there is the planning and the meetings and potential costumes and all that. but after his second full day back at home the supernatural child calls and asks to speak to the dog. his older cousin used to call and talk to both dogs when there were two and he was younger. whispers and barks and giggles and growls. i have never been able to understand the conversations, two wobbly languages, the same with each child. but i hear the same tone, the quiet closeness between small child and small animal, all that distance between their real selves gone.
