Among my 6-year-old son’s many rituals, his meticulous consumption of fruit snacks remains the most consistent. After I help him open the bag, he gets to work, fishing each one out with his delicate digits. He then holds the sugar-scented gummy to his eyes and says its name twice. Even if he’s wrong, I don’t correct him. Just like when he’s flapping his arms, or flexing his hands, or playing construction site with his dump trucks in the dirt patch by the front gate, he seems to cease being aware of my existence. It’s a lonely place to be left. Sometimes I fear he’ll one day start stimming and never come out of it. So, as he recites the names of each fruit, I let my mind drift.

A pineapple, a pineapple.

Though our honeymoon “suite” in Tamarindo wasn’t much, one thing staff did each week was leave a pineapple on the formica countertop. I made us smoothies with them—fuel for our sea-kayaking, hiking, and love-making with all the sweetness and discomfort of two prior virgins. We felt at times like we had pineapples for genitalia, other times we would have preferred it. But in one of our paddles through the waves, we saw two sea turtles mating and we had faith that one day, we’d do it with that disarming grace.

A strawberry, a strawberry.

Initially stay-at-home-dadding felt like I’d been freed of the baby-grand-piano on my back, which teaching had become. But other problems soon took its place: like what to feed my son, then two years old. When he got hungry, he would send squalls of tears down upon us that wouldn’t let up until he was sated. The time between his meals were reprieves only if I could figure out what to feed him next. He’d gorge himself on bread one day; the next, he’d refuse to touch it. But strawberries were a reliable option. Good thing, because in the Boston Public Market, he was melting down until I found him that carton of juicy vermillion jewels every one of which he devoured without sharing until falling asleep, face first in the sticky rouge of the paper plate.

A blackberry, a blackberry.

On one of our walks through the woods, my son trundled too close to the trail’s edge and got sideswiped by the octagonal tendrils of blackberry overgrowth and he cried until I was worried he was going to pass out. Either he was already tired or the novelty of having anything pierce his cherubic skin shocked him to the core, but he wouldn’t stop crying. Partly because of his characteristic verve and untarnished pluckiness, his tantrums rend my world from ceiling to floor, and they always leave me looking around to see if a.) someone wouldn’t mind relieving me for a coffee break from fatherhood or b.) if someone’s going to call the cops. Can my wife see the traces of tears on his cheeks after I wipe them off? He only calmed down when I popped into his mouth a gem of glistening purple sweetness right off the offending vine.

A raspberry, a raspberry.  

Daddy! Thorns!  He says it pointing at the raspberry sprouting out of the bare patch near mommy’s blueberries. Then he says, Go away thorns. You better go! My daddy’s going to come getchu! Every word my son speaks is a bead on a rosary that I thumb in thanks when times are hard. Spade in hand, I uproot the offending shoots. My wife regrets planting the raspberry, not knowing that they would grow with such insatiability. Her regrets number more than mine these days, which has given me a worry knot above my left eyebrow—one of many life-related transmutations to come. She regrets moving into this house because it’s priced us out of ever existing on my teacher’s salary alone. She regrets taking the job at a multinational because she believes her salary has peaked, pinioning her in a soulless job she mostly hates. She regrets getting older and all the pains, infections, swellings, surgeries, and chronic conditions that her forty years have brought her. All my forty years have brought me is my worry knot, which clouds over my left eye as I wonder what else she regrets. We have had our sea-turtle times now, thirteen years in, but they’re fading from view, gray waves encroaching between us. Having tossed the upturned raspberry shoots into the yard waste bin, I say, Okay, baby. Thorns are gone, Just watch out for mommy’s blueberries. He rolls his Tonka dumpers back in, blueberries be damned.

A… A…Oh, no. Daddy! What’s this, Daddy?

Could be a dragon fruit. Could be a persimmon. Could be a kumquat.

It’s a life.