He stands just behind my right shoulder – a young man, so comfortable in his own skin, his presence adds inches to his height. And, in six-year-old guise, he clutches my left hand as tightly as his young strength allows. The nine-month-old him sprawls, arms and legs akimbo, in complete abandon on the bed’s rumpled sheets; while he-at-twelve sits on the edge of the same bed with arms defiantly crossed about his narrow torso – purposefully, he avoids my eye, assures himself that I know this. Finally, there, in a knot of sheet spilled upon the floor, is his smallest and youngest form – a red faced, yowling and inconsolable, thumb-sized infant whose continuous, shrill shriek drives all ability to think from my skull.

— C.Birde, 7/18