the poop bucket

i was there so often that summer you helped me set up a little bedroom in the back of the house, just a couch and a table behind a curtain.
the bedrooms were too stuffy
and the two windows filled with nothing but trees were too compelling.

the tree inside on the walls compelled too.
i used to lie in the hammock as the track lift creaked perilously above me and watch all those hand-prints climb up and down the branches.
i knew most of them (all of them?)

should mine be there?
i could never figure out the answer.
i could never ask.

you yelled and pushed me aside with your backpack,
and i learned that sometimes the best way is out-of-the-way.
you waved dismissively, too cool for me, and i knew it, and you knew that i knew it,
and i learned that was something i could live with.
you just looked and laughed.
i could always tell how well i was doing by how long i could meet your eyes.
i knew logically that 'mental age' was a lot of bunk, but you showed me as you grew slower and wiser and saw more deeply than the scrawny kid in all your old pictures.
age isn't multiplication tables, age is when you can carefully lift someone up to change their brief, listen to them chuckling at Scooby-Doo running into a door, and still sense in each smile and stretch and grasping hand every one of their 40-odd years of life.

here a contentious poop bucket became a deep and lasting friendship.

here i asked you "but what if it goes poorly" and then,
even more terrified,
"what if it goes well?"

i wish i could bring you comfort,
but i know from Nana and Scott and Bob and Yvonne that there's no comfort to be had when someone is disappearing.

it's ok to fail, you say, if i can look long enough to hear you.
each moment of failure is gone into the next moment,
forgotten as soon as it arrives.
see?
a sneeze is still funny.
see?
a missed brush stroke is still just a happy accident.
see?
he said it best, that gem of a human being, preaching from your tv:
see?
way down deep inside you, not the things that hide you,
it's you yourself,
it's you,
i like.