Today Zac and I took a ride around the neighborhood on our bikes.  He likes to go super fast then jam his brakes to leave a skid mark.  From the tire, I mean.  He’s getting better at riding in sync with other people — keeping  a consistent pace, riding in a straight line, not suddenly stopping in front of me, etc.  I can see the day where he and I will ride many miles.  Our longest journey by bike to date has been around 4 miles.

Before that, Mac and I took a walk and found some mulberry bushes.  He calls Mulberries “the free candy of the forest” and I agree.  I reached up and pulled the tall branches down so he could easily reach the ripe ones.  Delicious indeed, though I couldn’t remember if they were poisonous.  So far we’re both doing fine.

When I was a kid we had holly bushes in the backyard, with the pointy firm green leaves and the little red berries that look like something from Bill Wonka’s factory.  Mom reminded me regularly not to eat the enticing treats, for they were highly poisonous.  So I tried one, ya know, just to see how it tasted.  Evidently the concentration wasn’t high enough to do me in, though it would explain some things.

A friend of mine posts videos about eating stuff in the wild.  Green things taste like spinach and flowers taste different than they smell.  Some people put earthworms in their cookies as a substitute for raisins.  I’ll take the raisins.

I think my task at this life stage is to enjoy my boys exploring the things that I tend to miss.  The mulberries went unnoticed by me for years, yet his keen eye found them right away.  And I haven’t “done tricks” on my bike like that in quite a while.  Parenting is just being there and being interested — not in what you already know, since that’s hard to do.  It’s easy, however, to be interested in them as they’re discovering.  Watching my sons grow up — now there’s something I didn’t do when I was young.  That was Dad’s job.