growing into my skin. have this little five year old boy....neighbor's grandson, who has developed a fondness for the wife and I to the point he simply walks in to the house without knocking and declares his presence. I really dig this little guy as he is meaner than a snake, his orneriness is all too familiar, his little black eyes just dance as his mind churns out his next plot of mischief. He had me rolling on the ground, belly-laughing, as he told Mockingbird that his Kanichi's were sore from falling from his bicycle. She looks at me in bewilderment......? "oooh, my Kanichi's!..........ow!" I point to my groin for her to pick up on the conversation.........."OH!" the light goes off in her head, and she too has to laugh. The five year old and I converse in broken Cherokee, he is a kindergartner at a school that has a Cherokee language immersion class, and he loves to talk when others are around who cannot understand what he is saying. his eyes dance with our shared conversation.........and it only encourages him to continue to learn. he's good therapy for me, you just can't help but be happy when he's around, Mockinbird is quite infatuated with him, and he with her. "Where's your Mom?" he'll ask me in Cherokee, and I'll point to the kitchen and laugh...........as he considers me to be on his level and her as the Alpha in the relationship.......I get a kick out of following him into the kitchen to see "mom'........ sitting on the grass by the basketball goal, he compares our hands, his very dark little scraped up knuckles and my scarred up fingers........and then he notices the way the skin is beginning to sag a little around my fingers......then he looks at my face and draws his fingers down along the lines from my cheeks to the corners of my mouth, and then along the crow's feet by my eyes, and finally, the worry lines on my forehead. "Why does your skin do that?" he asks. "you look like a turtle". and he giggles. Then he says, "Dak'si"......."Uh-uh," I say, ""Daksi".....turtle. after a few minutes of teasing me, calling me Daksi, he returns to tracing the lines on my face. he's quite fascinated with it, feeling of his smooth, cherubic face, and then the crevices of my furrowed brow. "Why does your face do that?" he repeats the question, more pointedly, without the giggles. "I'm growing into my skin" I reply off-the-cuff. "What?" what does that mean, growing into your skin? You're "Growing" into your skin? eeeeehhhhh! that's silly! "Daksi" he taunts....and then runs off to find his basketball. I watch as he tries to hoist the ball up to the goal, and I think back to my Dad, all 6 feet of him, standing between me and my brothers and the basketball goal, a giant, yet somehow we would find our way around him and hoist the ball up to the goal, over and over again.....for hours. and my grandfather, smiling so hard that all you saw was crow's feet, no eyes, just the deep lines from the corners of his eyes as I drove the tractor up to where he stood. My other grandfather, and the grooves in his face from his cheeks to the corners of his mouth deepen as he would smile at me trying to peel an apple with his pocketknife just like he did, in one long continuous peel........and then smiling up at him with a cherubic face at my success. I'm beginning to understand something. something.......meaningful.....something...........fulfilling. That I never found in a bar, or in a store, or even in a book. the five year old runs up, "C'mon Daksi, let's play basketball?!" I stand up to play, creaking and groaning, squinting at the noon day sun, lines popping out on my face. "Ha-ha.....Daksi!" he points to me. I steal the ball and score on him.......but that's the only point I get until the five year old beats me 20-2. We "high-five" each other and sit on the grass.....panting, sweating.......I brush my hand across his closely cropped hair and the sweat flies off in arc.......he draws a line across my brow........"Daksi".......he says and then leans against my shoulder, tuckered out. now, I understand the furrows in dad and the grandfather's faces as they taught. now, I'm finally growing into my skin. |
Snopes - Befriended Hippo
WALEG Photo Galleries - The Hippo & The Turtle
"growing into my skin." © wauhilau as posted in
alt.discuss.clubs.public.culture.native-american.benable
on Sun, Jun 4, 2006, 10:02pm (EDT-3)
"I've Got You Under My Skin" by Cole Porter
bead bar courtesy of Greasy Grass