sleet thickens the wet

Off out this morning. Out with my boy following the river to the sea again.

As we left the flat I waited on him. For he is his mother's son: won't be rushed, will be there in his own sweet time. As I waited in the stairwell of the close I looked out at the back green, framed hugely by the half-landing window. Sleet was splattering silently down. Quiet it was, in the stairwell. The stripes of the walls thought-hummed a hymn to its painters. On the window sill ledge was an old odourless air freshener, also just there and letting the surroundings speak for themselves. We were all there noiseless, waiting for my son to join us.
When he emerged we went down river, the sleet splatter-casting our journey. And we did get out and we did walk for a while but it was too cold and thick and wet. A cormorant in the river slipped underwater for food and emerged drier than we were.

Not wanting to waste the drive, I took him up the braes to where I started my working life. The photo is taken from a place just beside where this happened.
I was not much older than he is now when I started working there. Yet he seems so young and vulnerable and raw. Thinking back, I don't see myself as that way even though the men and women of the factory were unsparing in their mockery of our age and innocence at that time. I always kicked back at their jibes and loved it when I made them laugh. I've always been able to do that: to disarm through humour.
So these thoughts come thick and loose as I take this picture. They come and they stick then they slide and run down the back of my neck to make me shiver. I head back to the car where he is waiting warm and watching. I try to see us of an age. I try to imagine him among the merciless barbs.
I want to give you my defences, is what I want to say. I want to arm you against the mockery and danger. I want to give you what I've used all this time to keep myself safe and at a distance.
Then I look at him sitting there with his great expectant teeth, our breaths steam-lining the windows. We live, we breathe in this metal crucible. So pure, so guileless and uncertain is he. And a change comes, and I want to ask him: give me that, give me what you have. I want to collapse the distance of clever words. I want to be like you, like your mum: teach me.

"Did you get the picture?" he asks me.
"Aye. Aye, son: I think I did."

I start the engine and demist the window. Time to head back home.