Turn 146 of 233

Encourage Kimo to keep crawling

Tuesday morning and the site is loud with saws and nail guns and the crew is in the frame and the frame is going up fast. Lena sets Kimo on the blanket in the shade of the trailer at seven and the boy is on his stomach immediately and the arms reach and the legs push and the lurching begins. The crawling is faster than yesterday — not by much, not by a margin anyone else would measure, but Lena measures it. The boy covers a foot before he stops and the stopping is not resting. The stopping is looking. The dark eyes track a rolled bolt rolling across the concrete and the boy adjusts his direction and lurches toward it.

Lena crouches beside the blanket and the crouching is the crouching of a 600-pound woman lowering herself to a child's level and the knees crack and the belly folds heavy on the thighs. She puts her hand six inches in front of Kimo's reaching fingers. Not touching. Just there.

"Come on, big boy. Come get it."

Kimo lunges. The lunge covers four inches and the arms flail and the legs kick and the face pushes into the blanket and the blanket bunches under his chin. The humming is loud — louder than the saw, louder than the nail gun, a frequency that vibrates through the concrete pad and up through Lena's knees. The boy reaches for her hand and misses and reaches again and the fingers close on her thumb and the grip is strong. The grip is the grip of a boy who has been holding things since he was born and the holding is the thing.

"That's it. That's the hand. Now pull yourself."

Kimo pulls. The arm drags the body forward and the body is twenty-three pounds and the arm is an arm that has been swinging in a harness for two months and the arm is ready and the body follows. Two more inches. Lena moves her hand back. The boy's eyes track the hand and the tracking is sharp and the sharpness is the sharpness of a child who has learned that the hand moves and the moving is the reason to move.

Marco looks over from the nail gun station.

"He's really going."

"He's really going," Lena says. She doesn't look up. The hand moves back again and Kimo lurches after it and the lurching is smoother — not smooth, not the crawling of a child who has been doing this for weeks, but smoother than yesterday and the smoothness is the progress and the progress is the point.

Tuki comes over during the midmorning water break and crouches beside the blanket and watches. The watching is quiet and the quiet is the quiet of a father watching someone else's child do something new.

"My oldest didn't crawl until seven months," Tuki says. "My wife cried."

"Kimo's two months," Lena says.

"Two months," Tuki says. The word sits between them and the sitting is the sitting of a man who has three children and knows what the schedule says and knows the schedule doesn't say this. He watches the boy lurch three more inches toward Lena's hand and the watching is warm and the warm is the warm of Tuki.

The afternoon is hotter and the shade moves and Lena moves the blanket with the shade and the crawling continues in bursts — three minutes of lurching, then a pause where the boy rests his cheek on the blanket and the humming drops to a murmur, then three more minutes. Lena lays on the concrete beside him between header lifts and the boy crawls toward her face and the crawling ends with his hand on her nose and the humming is very loud and very close and the closeness is the closeness of a boy and his mother on a concrete pad in the Florida heat.

By evening the boy has crossed the blanket four times. Four full lengths — edge to edge, the full span, the arms reaching and the legs pushing and the body lurching and the humming steady through every inch. Lena picks him up and the boy is heavy and warm and dusty and the dust is in his hair and in the folds of his neck and the dust is the site and the site is his. She puts him in the harness and the harness holds him against her chest and the boy hums against her sternum and the vibration is the vibration Lena knows.

"Three days," Lena says to the crew as they pack up. The frame is ninety percent and tomorrow is the close and the close will be clean.

The drive home is the drive home and Kimo is awake in the car seat and the humming is going and the boy is moving his legs in the harness and the legs are pushing against the straps and the pushing is the pushing of a boy who has learned that his body can go where his eyes look and the learning is two days old and the two days are the beginning.