When the Goose Bites, When the Bee Stings...

The little one is afraid of geese, he confides, finally settling to a simmer after I lead my company in push-ups and jacks.

"What do you do when you are afraid?" I press, now that I am conversing with a boy instead of a forty-five pound sugar high.

For me, it was jack-in-the-boxes. Jack-in-the-boxes and eighteen wheelers. And kickball.

The older brother -- Impatience Incarnate -- interjects. "Run away," he squawks, and coaches some martial arts moves which may or may not intimidate the Canadian geese in question. Which of those helpful tactics did he enlist today, I wonder, when David Perez the sixth grade bully put fingers across his face?

"I'm scared of geese," the "baby" reminds me with an outside voice an inch from my face.

"Can you tell God you are scared, and ask him to help you?" Tiny brown fingers cup briefly in front of folded knees in the shape of a five-year-old-Muslim prayer before the conversation escalates in a brother-on-brother stage competition. Geese fly in and out of the dueling monologues, as do Sponge Bob and future career options.

The future is a string of presents, and I wonder how many I will share with these two man-sprouts, and what kind of fruit I am stringing into these characters.

"Be nice to your Mom tomorrow, okay?" Maybe if I put these words out into the air around his effervescent little being, he will bounce into them and consent without voicing the ever-present "Why." Or maybe he will ask, and I will have to fight the urge to say, "because geese bite boys that are mean to mamas," and produce a worthy reason.

Now, acute and accidental prayers for these hearers of our footsteps swoop in to invade my Beloved Solitude, and I cannot help but fear that the One I petition is occupied now, working on our parents' own request that their selfish daughter would be soon ready to be a mom...