Sorting through his life

The last time I visited Little Biker Boy — the boy who used to live down the street and now lives in a foster home — his foster mother said that she wanted him to make a scrapbook to help sort out his life. “We don’t have any photos of him,” she said. “You don’t have any, do you?”

Little Biker Boy and I looked at each other, and he grinned. I take pictures constantly. I have hundreds of photos of him on my computer.

So tonight when I went over to visit him at his foster home, I brought more than 200 photos I’d printed out. I’ve got pictures of him helping to decorate our Christmas tree. I’ve got pictures of him dyeing Easter eggs at my kitchen table. I’ve got pictures of him playing in the snow in my front yard and running under the sprinkler in my back yard.

Little Biker Boy kept holding pictures up and saying, “Look! Remember that?”

When we were done looking at the photos, we took a walk through his neighborhood. “I’ll show you where there’s a dead rabbit,” he said. He led me to a drainage pipe, and sure enough, there was a rabbit in an advanced stage of decay.

When we got back to his house, he got out his sidewalk chalk and we drew pictures on the back patio. “This chalk is supposed to glow in the dark,” he said. It wasn’t dark yet, so we sat on the swinging bench, him leaning against me while I rubbed his neck and shoulders. He talked quietly, and I listened. The chalk didn’t really glow in the dark, but fireflies appeared to dance in the warm night air.