The Circle’s Curve

The morning before his fifth grade camp out, my ten year old son Jason walked around our house snapping his fingers in complicated rhythms. He does that when he’s happy. His pillow, sleeping bag, lunch and backpack were piled near the kitchen door.

Organizing for this trip was really easy for Jason. There were more than thirty items he needed and packed (without help) by Tuesday for the Thursday trip. Incredible! I thought. Just yesterday I was teaching him how to comb his hair and brush his teeth.

As the time neared for us to leave for school, he walked and snapped around and around his pile of packing with great purpose. He looked like a young warrior performing a prayer dance before venturing off into the unknown. He danced circle after circle snapping all the way.

His dancing reminded me how Jason has always liked circles. He trusts the way they leave and come back. He’s teaching me to trust them, too.

We enjoyed the circles of the seasons together at a local nature center from almost the day he was born. As an infant he’d watch birds and leaves from the Snuggly on my chest and save his sleeping for the ride home. As he got older we’d walk around the center’s pond to look for frogs. Jason and I followed the walking trails out and back and saw wonderful carpets of fall leaves and the delightful orange of red efts in lines of migration. In winter we’d sled down the center’s hill and circle back to the top again and again together.

When he was little our basement was unfinished and one huge open rectangle. He called it his track and would run the oval at its edges. When I did laundry he’d run around and around. Even in the darkest corners of the basement he wasn’t afraid because he trusted his path would bring him back to me. I wasn’t afraid because even though they were getting bigger, his circles were still within my sight.

Once when he was three, Jason rode his trike around a tall pine tree near our garage. I stood outside his path watching.

“I am Dr. Viadero,” he said.

“Ok. Hello Dr. Viadero,” I said laughing at him becoming his father.

He rode a loop.

“I am coming home,” he said.

“Ok,” I said. “I’ll make dinner.” I pretended to stir in a bowl and offered it as he neared.

“Sorry,” he said. “There’s been an emergency.” and he swerved away from me and back onto his circle.

“OK,” I said. As he rounded the tree I said, “I’m glad you’re home.”

“Nope,” he said. “I have a meeting.”

“Oh no!” I wailed and his circling became hysterical. He pumped faster and rode harder almost flipping on the turns.

“More work!” Another loop.

“Sick patient!” Faster.

“More meetings!” Another loop.

We laughed and laughed as I chased him around the tree, hopped on and, because I still could, pirated him and his tricycle off the wild circle and into the safety of the garage.

He is almost as tall as me now. He wears men’s shoes, clothes and sometimes their attitudes. He is old in so many ways it is frightening. He’s certainly older than I was at ten, even older in some ways than I am at forty.

He asks to stay with our sick friend whose heart is so frail her doctor says it could stop at any time. “I have 911,” he says, “But what does it look like when someone has a heart attack?”

His father and I explain how variable it can be. How it can be scary. We tell him not to stay with her if he’s afraid, but to go outside and wait for help.

“I could stay,” he says and I believe him.

Last summer Jason was a first-time commuter at a college run basketball camp. He was one baseball-capped backpack-toting kid in a sea of hundreds on an endless campus. We had argued that this situation was too much too soon for him, but he won out. I dropped him off reluctantly and went home to pray.

The 9 p.m. pick-up was at a gym on the fringes of campus. When I got there the area was deserted. Doors were locked. The only pay phone was dead. I was frantic.

Over the next hour other parents congregated and still no kids.

About ten thirty one lone coach marched a group of kids across the nearby soccer fields to our gym. Jason wasn’t among them and I grabbed the coach demanding he find my son. I stood where I’d been for almost two hours now as the coach went off in search of Jason. I was so afraid I don’t remember breathing.

About twenty minutes later Jason, whose eyes were brimming with tears, returned with the coach who was sparsely apologetic saying Jason had gotten separated from his group.

“Are you OK?” I asked, terrified.

“People just left on their own. The phone here doesn’t work. I went back to the gym and was just about to walk down to the dorms to call home,” he cried, more angry and embarrassed than scared. “I’m fine,” he finished and I knew he was.

I held him with a sudden calm. He had been on the right path all along, hunting down markers and looking for home. I realized then that as his circles get bigger and more out of sight I must do my best to trust in the circle’s curve, just like Jason, and wait for it to bring him back home again.