My Forty Nine and a Half Year Old Boy

I spent years sitting on my can believing I had to live properly

Rather than chase or choose or pursue the dreams that I dreamed.

I’m learning dreams come true now and see it happening a lot.

Lately things have been getting done with dreams I’d near forgot.

They are rising up in healing waves of confidence and joy

And who I have to thank for it is a forty nine and a half year old boy.

I call him a boy for his baby face charm and the clean way

He has of pretending his little mistakes are the plan of the day.

And because if I chide him for anything he gives me that cute look

Like the child that gets most folk to see a prankster, not a crook.

Mostly I call him a boy because he has the will and has the way

To take 24 hours and make them count a fully measured day.

He makes the most of every minute like a boy before bed.

He lives each hour like it matters if he misses something said.

He cares and hopes and keeps his secrets like worms in his pocket.

I find them later and think, oh, so that’s what he meant or he wanted.

He looks at me sometimes and though I am not mother but wife,

I can tell it matters if I say he did wrong or I think he did right.

He plays loose with his kids and they make disagreeable

Noises and laughter and jokes and delight at unsettling my table.

Half the time I must admit finally I give manners the heave ho shun.

It is so much more productive and happy to simply join the fun.

I know he knows better and so do his sons so there is no harm

Allowing the joy and jesting and bonding while I feign alarm.

He has his lazy moments but they are few and far between.

He is the most compassionate, devoted man I have ever seen.

He dreams a dream and plans a plan and then he has begun

Like a child who has never had the thought it can’t be done.

He has inspired me to listen to the child in me who can do

Rather than sit and act old and finished and think that I am through.

 Like most boys he’d rather spend his money on a toy than a bill

Yet, a man I can trust and count on, I don’t doubt his grown-up will.

Sometimes I’d like to pull my hair out at how stubborn he can be,

And to make a big decision, first come the grave, more like than he.

He makes me laugh even at times I thought I needed most to cry

This is the man and the forty nine and a half year old boy I love and why.

Kathy Adams