Tiny Weapons

TINY WEAPONS

There sits in front of me a small blue picture frame. It is a tiny, frivolous object. It is clearly a woman’s gift. A mother’s gift to another mother, because what could possibly fit into it but the tiny 2-inch frame, but a school photo of a child.

My years of school photos and the small hands that bring them home with such pride and unembarrassed love are far behind me. Where are those photos now, I think? In the backs of drawers? Carefully placed away in a memory box somewhere when the drawers became too full? I can't remember, and my days are busy. I think, another time.
One of these days. When other, more pressing and immediate matters have not hijacked my time.
\One of these days.

And so the days go by, full years of busy days and hijacked time. Pictureless, its sits on my dressing table, waiting. But it is such a pretty thing -- framed as it is with tiny blue gems, delicately wrought in the pattern of a trailing vine with one exquisite flower on the corner -- which I have kept there, thinking -- one day I must find something for it. A mother's picture frame that holds no child of mine.

Another busy day. Calls to make, appointments to keep, bills to pay. Where is that business card I need? Where is that number? I take out the wad of clutter in my wallet, sifting through the jetsam of receipts, appointment cards for doctor visits long missed, bar napkins with scribbled notes of forgotten importance ... and the world falls away from me because there he is. The bright blue eyes and eager gap-toothed grin of my boy shine out to me in two precious cardboard inches that stab my heart... and the loss of his five-year old innocence washes over me --wave after wave and I cannot breathe.

He is gone from me and in the keeping of an Uncle Sam, a distant relative whom I do not trust.

And I am blind to all but this 2 inch treasure, this Kodak square of a moment in time when my boy was safe, and it was still within my power to keep him from the strangers, from the beckoning Uncles and their promises of candy if he'll just go for a little ride.

I spy my mother's picture frame, waiting for this moment, and there is no call I have to make, no meeting to make, no bill to pay that is more important than this.

In this frame he will be safe I think from the bayonets and bombs of people who pray to a god so different from mine. In this mother's frame no harm can come. The vines of leafy jewels will wrap and shelter him. I will protect him here.

But his picture will not slide easily. What's this? A folded paper tightly wedged inside my son's new haven. An obstacle no bigger than my thumbnail but one my thumbnail cannot penetrate.

And suddenly this tiny fiber obstruction is the enemy of my son and therefore mine as well.
I need a tiny weapon for my tiny foe.
Tweezers.
I own three pairs and not a single one is in its keeping place. Panicked, I am on the floor in desperation. Knowingly irrational and grabbing anything at hand -- bent paper clips, kitchen knives, nail files.
Nails.
The sharp vise of a nail clipper pulls out the offending folded scrap, and suddenly my wild mind imagines it contains a message: "Mommy hold me close." But the paper is as empty as my arms, and I am in a vacuum walled with grief because my boy is in his Uncle's arms instead.

I slide him into this charm, this talisman against the evil in the world. Blue is my blue-eyed boy's favorite color and in his blue-jeweled frame his five-year old self smiles at me minus that first tooth. I breathe my prayers that a benevolent God stands watch over us both.

–Tobyn Leigh