Rewind
hoard the sweetness
Rewind - Issue #102
My son is in his room, bent low over Curious George, the paperback curling in his hands like a creature that trusts him. He reads aloud in fragments, to himself more than to me, and he speaks of George as one speaks of a companion encountered daily on the walk to school—a friend whose mischief is never punished and whose leaps never end in harm. A friend who never ends. “George tries things,” he says, certain and proud. “When I grow up, I’ll try things too.”
The words lodge under my ribs like coins swallowed, glinting there, still. He does not know how many times I have already watched him try—and fail, and fall, and fold back into silence. He does not know how many times I have unspooled the hours, reeled him in, rewound the world until the tape snapped in my hands. He does not know that tonight waits for him like a wolf in the bushes. He does not know that the story has only one ending.
From the kitchen, I hear him calling, a note that carries down the hallway with the brightness of a bell struck and struck again.
“Dad! Want to see my favorite?”
His voice cuts me open every time. He appears in the doorway, the book hidden behind his back like contraband, his smile the unbroken smile of someone who has not yet seen the trapdoor at the bottom of the world. When he reveals it, it is Curious George Makes Pancakes.
George spills, George stirs, George redeems. Batter everywhere, townsfolk fed, laughter, forgiveness. The neatness of a story. My son turns the page with reverence to the scatter of blueberries, the secret ingredient. His finger rests there. “This is the best part,” he says.
And I wonder—if he chose it because of me, if he remembers the way I eat them by the handful, the way I hoard sweetness. Or if it is only chance, only the comfort of color. Stories seduce you into believing the smallest choices matter, that fruit folded into batter can stave off hunger, that love folded into time can stave off loss.
He looks at me again, waiting, asking, the same question always. “Want to see my favorite?”
The clock collapses because I collapse it. The air thickens. Twelve minutes stretch and snap. He is gone. He is here again.
He is still here.
He is still here.
My name is Rewind.
He is still here.
And I say yes. Yes, of course. Show me. Show me again.
My son.
My son is in his room, paging through Curious George Makes Pancakes. George tries things. George never stops trying. And I have made trying into my faith, my ritual, and my wound. I flip the moment, burn the edge, scrape it clean, flip it again.
I scorch time black, and still I taste the blueberries, bright against the char.
Thanks for reading all that.