My Borrowed Son

Unwrapped Questions

Chapter Ten | Unwrapped Questions

"Happy birthday Parker! Smile!" Amanda held up her phone and snapped several pictures over and over, not wanting to miss a single moment. The click of the digital shudder seemed to flick the memories from the past six years before Amanda's eyes. She replayed them in her mind.

She could remember all of it as if it were yesterday.

Finding Parker under the bench abandoned and alone.

His first words.

His trust building as he grew and began to question the world around him.

It seemed like yesterday that she celebrated his first birthday with her where he turned a whopping five years old; at least, that's where she thought he was age wise. Now he was officially ten years old.

Double digits.

It took everything in her not to break out in a sob as she reminisced. The years had certainly aged him. The minuscule boy no bigger than her thumb was growing up. There was a sense of pride that she had managed to keep him alive and safe all of this time, but also a sense of wonder and fear.

Parker wasn't two inches tall anymore. He was getting closer to three and a quarter inches, and he would only keep growing from there. He was developing a sense of style and taste in the things he liked. The clothes he wore, which he was beginning to make himself, were more free flowing and flexible while tight in others.

His mind constantly wanted more knowledge. By now, he had read through nearly every book in Amanda's home and she was renting stacks of books weekly for him from the local library. Parker had also gotten into experimenting recently, which was a huge scare for Amanda.

She had walked by his room one day to find one of the push lights completely disassembled and Parker messing with the wires, connecting them to different elements of the electronic device to figure out how it worked.

That ended up being a discussion about safety which Parker did not enjoy.

The rambunctious boy was also getting into climbing and inventing, which set Amanda completely on edge. Not only was Parker balancing precariously on whatever he could, but he was testing the strength of different items around the house. Once, Amanda found him with a piece of yarn attached to a paper clip which was wrapped around one of the knobs on the bathroom counter.

When she asked him why, he said he didn't know.

It just felt right.

He had an unexplainable urge to climb and jump and tumble over anything and everything. Try as she might, Amanda couldn't get him to stop completely. The compromise was that she had an area specifically set up for him to run drills and "play." It was like a complicated playground with tunnels made from the cardboard tubes from toilet paper or paper towels as well as yarn, toys, and boxes.

Despite his rambunctiousness, Parker also found time for his "quiet" activities, reading and writing in the notebooks Amanda gave him. He was a thoughtful, intuitive child and it really showed in his writing when he dared to share it with his mom.

Now, he was a whole ten years old.

Amanda nearly choked up again as she stared at her son's face and the little plume of smoke where the candle once stood lit. It was the first candle he had ever been able to blow out by himself.

"Did you get it, mom?" asked Parker as he leaned around his cupcake birthday cake and stood as tall as he could. Amanda had to quickly wipe her eyes with the back of her hand as she nodded.

"Of course I did, sweetie," she said affectionately. "Now, cake or presents first?"

"Presents please!" Parker cheered as he stepped off of his makeshift stool that he stood on top of to blow out his candle. He darted over to the small, wrapped boxes Amanda had prepared. It was excruciating work, but it was well spent. Parker deserved to have wrapped presents just like any other child after all.