my dad taught me how to set shit on fire when i was 6 with a magnifying glass. instead of reading us stories he would read us his flight training manuals until we got so bored we would pretend to be asleep so he would leave. on my birthday one year he somehow made fish sticks in the shape of stars and seashells. he let us paint our bedframes in six different colors with different levels of success. in middle school i was assigned to make a mouse trap car and he helped me make one that worked so well that i was banned from making mousetrap cars again. in my first year of uni he would drive 3 hrs from work to pick me up and another 3 to take me home to visit, and would do it every time without complaint. he used to do my hair in pigtails every day, and that turned to learning to braid when i got older. he would always pretend to be bad at the video games we played so we could win. he made our beds so perfectly that we had to stretch the sheets out to get back in.
my brother is younger then me. for my birthday one year he presented me a lego minifigure of myself that he had hand painted. when he had his first crush he carved her name in a piece of wood and shaped it into a dolphin. not because dolphins were her favorite animal, but because he thinks they’re cool. he let me destroy a piñata he made in school because i was having a bad day, and we both laughed as we ate the candy he put inside of it. despite always being squeamish around dead things, he once brought home a hog’s vertebrae he found on a hike because he knew i would love it. (i did). when his girlfriend’s birthday came around, he spent all his time restoring a nightstand for her, carving cats and flowers into the panels and smoothing them with sandpaper.
i have more of these stories. my cousin’s husband incorporates his children’s names into the code he programs. my grandpa helped me pull a leech off of my ankle after a swim in the pond. my great grandpa carried a photo of my mom in the sole of his shoes until the day he died. the neighbor boy across the street once captured a very weird bug under a cup and walked it across the street to show me. my best friend collected old batteries and bits of wire for me because he knew i liked to play with them. a boy in my first grade class colored his nails pink with highlighter because he really liked my pink dress i wore the day before. my coworker took a photo of a cactus he saw because he knew i would like it. my 3yo cousin insisted i take home his most beloved plushie when he learned i would be living away from my parents.
i can’t help it. i love the way men love.
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