Open Writing

He hopped backwards, his black boot making prints on the clay path like a one-legged animal in reverse. "Andy, do you need to go to the bathroom, again?” I sighed.

He was wearing his pleaful this is serious, you have to listen to me now expression. “Grandma, I want to run through those yellow tulips over there. Please.” Then he spun around leaving a hand-print in the mud, splatters of mud hitting the back of his head.

He‘ll need a hair wash tonight. “You can’t be running around like that, Andy. I told you it was muddy.”

“But I have to, grandma. This is my only chance to run through the tulips.”

I shook my head. Negative, Andy. I take him to the tulip fields and all he cares about is yellow. All he wants to do is run. Can’t he just look and enjoy?

“Please, grandma?”

I had seen that look before—expectant as the eye of a tornado, set as a fence post, flushed as a peach—but I wasn’t sure when. Running with the neighbor kids last summer he had a different look: a dreamy I can do anything I want without even trying expression.

One of the older boys had a stopwatch and the children made a course around the old stump. One at a time they raced the clock. Get Ready. Get Set. Go. Except Andy. He missed his first turn; he was petting the cat. But he crouched in fine style his second time around. Get Ready. Get Set. Go. We all watched as Andy spun around and around the stump as though he were chasing windmills. No, he was a windmill. White bony arms straight out, eyes closed but just barely.

“You're supposed to run,” hollered Katie. His big sister wants him to do what the other kids do. She was six last summer, and cares a lot what the neighborhood thinks.

“Grandma, can I?”

So here we are in the country in a drizzle. So now he wants to run? Through tulips. In the mud. I wondered how it feels to run. Would breezes swirl around his ears clutching at him, sliding under his collar and down his back? How can I say “no” to that upturned, ardent little face?

“I’ll tell you what, Andy,” I negotiated. “You can walk around the field. That way you won’t get dirty. I’ll stay right here and wave.”

He didn’t say word; he just stood like a flower in a shadow.

Was it the yellow he wanted to brush up against? If it were me, I would run into that blanket of magenta, blood red and sunset orange across the road. Although there is no red hanging in my closet (I wear outfits of sea foam and barely blue and beige) when it comes to tulips it is the crimsons that catch my breath.

“Please, grandma, can I go now? I’m going to run. You can come, too.”

What were the words in my first reading book? See Dick. See Dick run. See Jane. Run Jane, run. “Go. You won’t be happy until you do.” He was half way down the row already. A drab little sight in his sweats: navy blue jacket almost blowing off of his body; dark green pants; black boots; dark blond hair. I wished I could see his face.

I waited, thinking he would turn around and wave and I would smile and wave back, but he kept getting smaller and smaller until he was almost as short as the flowers marking his path. I stuck the toe of my sandals into the mud as though I was testing the water. I glanced back at those dots of red, pink and magenta flowing together like a painting by Seurat. We could drive over there next, but the yellow is handy and Andy is calling. “Come on grandma. Come on. I’ll wait for you. Come and run with me.”

At least, this is what I thought he said. Perhaps I should walk out a little way and meet him. My jacket dragged in the mud, oh well, and I felt cool air under my collar.

Andy raced toward me, his eyes unblinking, his cheeks flushed like peaches and even his clothes had taken on the golden glow of the tulips. “I’m coming, Andy. I’m coming,” I hollered. And I did. All the way. Fast.