I was patching a crack in my ex's mother's hallway when she started humming.
It was that old lullaby, the one my ex used to sing to our son. Only fragments now — a few notes, then silence.
I thought about the soccer trophy on my son's shelf. The little figurine snapped clean off at the ankle two years ago. I keep meaning to glue it.
She stopped humming and said, "He's got your stubbornness." I nodded. He's got her voice, too.
I work six hundred miles from where he sleeps. My new wife hums different songs at night.
The lullaby comes back to me in pieces, like drywall dust on a wet day. Nothing stays whole for long.
But maybe it's not about the whole thing. Maybe it's about the fragments that keep finding their way home.