Artist in Dreadlocks

I remember this intense looking child, who actually laughed a lot back then, a blur of boy racing around the courtyard between our two buildings with my son, bouncing a basketball almost bigger than he was and engaging in good natured braggadocio with the other kids. This photograph took me all the way back. This is E., my other son, the one the boy I birthed calls his brother, who he knew and loved before he could say his own name. I believe they are soul mates, friends from the time they were babies, an attentive and effortless brotherhood, still now. This child, now 19 years old, was in our home up to yesterday. He's grown into a good man, a light dancing in his eyes. And he has become a fine artist. The last time we visited the boys at college, we found E. in the art studio, making drawings for a painting, happy. Maybe he'll use this incredibly beautiful image to make a portrait of the artist as a dreadlocked five-year-old. I'd hang it on my wall. Or rather, I'd go visit it on his mother's wall.