I ruminated on the way home, and realized several things:

1. Ian has overcome much of his fear of heights, dark places, loud noises, and death.
2. I am more flexible than I think.
3. I am thirty-one years old, not twenty. Or six.
4. The groin muscle I injured several years ago has not completely healed.
5. I am now keeping up with Ian, not the other way ’round.

We spent last week in Madeira Beach with friends and our godson, sharing a beach-front condo and sixteen-hour drive. Ian and Timothy spent the trip no more than six inches apart. They sat next to each other in the car, played together on the beach and in the bath, and shared a room.

When traveling with kids, you must always cater to the lowest common denominator. The difference, with this trip, was that Ian had always been that denominator. His feeding times, his nap schedule, his height restriction. In Madeira Beach, Timothy set the bar.

Ian was infinitely patient. When I use the word ‘infinite’, I’m being quite literal. When it came to Timothy, there was no end to Ian’s grace and good will. He shared his best toys, his favorite foods, his parents’ attention. During a rainy-day trip to the aquarium, Ian took Timothy by the hand and led him gently through the exhibits, pointing, explaining, and teaching.

On the morning of the penultimate day, Ian woke late. Timothy had woken an hour earlier. Ian stumbled from his room, and shuffled, frowning, to the bathroom. He walked back without having said a word. I followed.

He’d returned to bed, buried under the covers. I closed the door, lifted the blanket, and crawled next to Ian. He snuggled into my arm.

‘How’re you?’

‘Okay.’

‘Just tired?’

‘Yeah.’

We lay still, the sounds of Elmo drifting from the living room.

‘Did you need a break from Timothy?’

‘…Yeah.’

‘It’s hard work, isn’t it?’

‘What?’

‘Being a big brother.’

‘Yeah.’

‘It takes a lot of work, and a lot of patience. Kinda like being a daddy. I’m very proud of you. You’ve done a wonderful job taking care of Timothy. You’ve been very good to him.’

He shifted. ‘Daddy?’

‘Yeah, kiddo?’

‘Don’t you know how I wanted a little brother?’

‘Yep.’

‘I don’t need one anymore, because I got my wish. God gave me a brother, huh?’

‘He sure did.’ He nodded. ‘Do you want to get up now?’

‘…No.’

So we didn’t.

37. He named his stuffed triceratops ‘Rhino’.

I dragged him from the water, found a naughty step, and explained that ‘life around here’s gonna get pretty rough if you don’t start getting your indefinite articles straight’.

He also went to bed early, without dessert.

Yet when a five-year-old boy presents you with a membership card for the ‘Woke Toke’ club, you don’t really have a choice in the matter.

This card, hand-printed and laminated in scotch-tape, was accompanied by an equally detailed, palm-sized walkie-talkie, the companion of which was nestled in Ian’s shirt pocket. All of this, of course, was a prerequisite for membership in the ‘Hunten Club’.

Last month, feeling nostalgic for the wasted hours of my childhood, I purchased a used copy of Final Fantasy XII. This is one of a continuing series of role-playing games which began with the original NES; the last I played was III, due in large part to marriage and rediscovery of natural light.

Final Fantasy XII features ‘Hunts’, whereby your party is hired to dispatch an expanding list of troublesome and implausible beasts for fun and profit. There is no dental plan, but you make your own hours.

Ian was hooked with our first hunt: the Rogue Tomato, which seems to be a hybrid of a tomato, rag-doll, and Garden Weasel. Our conquests soon included a Thextra, Rocktoise, and a Croakadile.

Hence the ‘Hunten Club’. Ian presented me with another membership card and a sword; he was carrying a bow. He’d drawn a menu of creatures from which to choose, from slimy blobs to fish with over-sized tongues. The walkie-talkies allowed us to separate for a more efficient search, and to call for help if absolutely necessary.

Our targets were elusive, so we regrouped at the Lego workshop to design a monster-detector:

We’re not accepting clients just yet, but we do have a waiting list.

‘Just keep it. It’ll cool down.’

‘No,’ as he slides from the couch, walks around me, and carefully places his cup on the table. ‘I don’t like to hold things.

‘Names? What do you mean?’

‘Like, names. Like you and me!’

‘Ah. You mean people names.’

‘Yeah! Does this car have a name?’

‘Of course. Nostalgia for Infinity.’

‘What?’

‘Nostalgia for Infinity.’

‘Hey, that’s catchy!’

Ian filled his tool-belt with a plastic knife, compass, three pirate eye-patches, and a treasure map. I made a book of matches for lighting fuses. He drew a map consisting of a line with a single dot, labeled ‘BOM’.

‘How would you change Mars so that people could live there?’

‘Well, first I would buy a water park.’

‘A water park? Like Aquatica? Why?’

‘Because we’d need a big bucket.’

‘Ah.’

‘And I would carry the sea to Mars in the big bucket,’ said my son, who does not possess doctorates in Chemistry, Biology, or Long Division.

‘How would you get the bucket to Mars?’

‘Lots and lots of people. Oh! And I would use the bucket to carry oxygen, too.’

‘Why oxygen?’

‘Because we need to breathe. But the oxygen would just float out of the bucket. Oh! We could put a lid on the bucket.’

‘That’s a good idea! Shouldn’t we use a rocket to carry the bucket?’

‘Well, the rocket would probably shake the lid off. But we could put a lock on the lid. And put the big bucket inside a bigger bucket with another lid. And lock that.’

And as my son transformed a world within the idle moments before school, his backward letters didn’t seem so concerning.