where from here?

The fourth of July, 2007 was Caleb's day...he was working the crowds as he loved to do. The last glimpse of him that I got was when he swaggered by me a second time. . I was at the Juice where I would run to after first seeing him in front of the Spirits Shoppe, Main St. . I always ran to the Juice in order to watch him again. ...his smile could not have been bigger, his laughter could not have been more pure in sound , his heart could not have been lighter. . Shaye was just to my right snapping away and producing the vey last photos we would see of Caleb as Yellowbeard as I knew him then. The 4th was Caleb's day ..... he lived for this day
......simply just for the fun of it.

When I was pregnant with my Caleb, I had visions in my dreams ...always the same one....of me holding a small hand placed ever so gingerly in mine. I could not see faces, only those two hands and I knew with a young mother's certainty, that I was going to have a boy. For the next 25 years that boy would be my teacher in the art of laughter. He cultivated smiles, planted the seeds of amusement and harvested people who in turn loved to laugh with him. He was masterful at it.....and he simply insisted on it with his family. Although Caleb was a very complicated person, he made a conscious decision to live freely from affectation, to demand little , and had decided early on that he would just happily make his way through life by smiling.
.....simply just for the fun of it.

By the afternoon of the 4th, the call came in and our lives were rivited to change. As I ran through traffic to get to him; barefoot and in a blur, once again I experienced that mother's certainty thatshouted to me that he was badly hurt. I knew it in every dark corner of my body.
I stood beside Kai and stared down at a bleeding Caleb .......the Caleb who now would once again change my life forever in ways that I cannot yet know . He brought us 25 years of laughter before..........what will he bring us now?
I look into a future and wonder who we will all become with our newly born boy. The obstacles seem to dance before me..taunting, beckoning. But I remeber the lessons I have learned in the past from that boy and I will not fall prey to doom. We move forward inch by inch, smiling when we don't feel like it, laughing when it feels strained, looking into his eye and wondering how he will emerge.

Last night, comfy in my bed and about to fall into sleep..I found myself crouched under the front porch in my leopard robe, lying in wait for Timmy, Max and Kai to come out; knowing they had just decided to go off to a party. I made eerie sounds that caught them off guard and created a search till Kai exclaimed " Is that mom?'
I have been taught by the very best of them...

and did it simply just for the fun of it!