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Little
Blue Boy PAGE
TWO But
I was tired and had groceries and Louie wouldn't budge, wanting
to go exploring in the woods in our back yard, which meant I had
to stay outside because, knowing Louie, he'd find a hollow tree
and get stuck inside in the minute it would take to put the groceries
down in the house. "What?"
said Louie, standing up straight and trying to discern a new sound
over the loud hum. Yea, I thought, finally, something I can use. The next day Louie was at a babysitter's while I worked at some odd job, one of the many I had while I figured out how to be a writer. "The oddest thing happened today," said the sitter, Judy. "What?" I said, having completely forgotten about my own cleverness. "I was downstairs and heard Louie getting up from his nap and moving things around. I went upstairs to check on him and he had stuffed his blanket under the door and locked himself in. When I called to him through the door, all he would say is, frogs. Do you know what that means?" I said I had no idea. Louie had a personal relationship with the real Santa Claus who came every year to the old Thalheimer's department store in downtown Richmond. Santa entered via a chimney set up like a living room with wing-backed chairs on either side of the fireplace, the whole thing plunked down just inside the entrance to the store near the women's clothing section. His legs dangled for a moment as we heard a familiar "Ho, ho, ho" before he dropped down, bent over in the artificial fireplace. (I have no idea how they rigged it all, much less talked a senior citizen into doing it). On the walk from the car to the magical chimney, Louie kept asking everyone we saw if we were suddenly at the North Pole. When it was his turn to see Santa, Louie handed him long letters that he had dictated to me. Santa read them out loud over a small microphone. The parents waiting in line, even Santa's helper elf, always cried while Louie sat there beaming. His list was never about what toys he hoped for, but who could use Santa's help the most that year. It was a wish list of a different kind. Life with Louie meant he decided, at five, to climb yet another tree, the very tall pine that used to be right outside our front door, and didn't stop until he was above the roof line. Wisely, he decided to sit on a comfortable branch and wait patiently for me to come looking for him. In the meantime he would yell hello to any neighbors he saw who would turn round and round looking for him, before giving up and just yelling hello back in the general direction of his voice. Everyone knew Louie and knew he must be up to something but in the end, he would also be okay. That was life with Louie. Scary, potentially dangerous, weird, funny, sad, touching, and always turning out okay. Standing underneath the tall pine, directing him down as I tried to gauge where to stand so I could act as a human mattress if necessary, I would repeat to myself for the umpteenth time, "He will grow up in spite of me. He will grow up in spite of me." When he got to the ground he gave himself one good shake, looked up at me with a grin and said, "You should see the view from up there!" He quickly turned and took off running to look for something else to discover. Louie's adventures were always an odd compliment to my own adventures as an undiscovered writer, and a good reminder on the days I wanted to give up and do something sensible. Sure, that would look like the reasonable thing to do and would have made a lot of my relatives feel more comfortable, but would have drained all of the fun out of life for me and taken away the possibilities that risk can often bring. Besides,
you should see the view from here.
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So,
you can see why I did what I did next. The lake behind the house
was filled with tree frogs and bullfrogs and cicadas and crickets.
It still is a very loud chorus in the warmer months that I find
very comforting. 
