Boyhood

That night, he took his old baseball glove from under his bed. The leather was stiff, the pocket shallow. He didn’t put it on. He just held it for a minute, smelling the ghost of cut grass and hose water. Then he put it in the bag of clothes his mother was donating.

The summer Miles turned ten, the world smelled of cut grass, hose water, and the peculiar, dusty scent of the inside of a baseball glove. His kingdom was the half-acre yard behind his house, bordered by a fence he could still, barely, see over if he stood on the overturned bucket by the rhododendrons. Boyhood

Summers bled into autumns. The dam was abandoned for a tree fort, a single plywood platform in the crook of an old oak. The tree fort was a place to spy on the neighbor’s dog, to eat stale Oreos, and to say the word “stupid” as a profound curse. The shoebox was forgotten, then remembered one rainy afternoon, only to find it had been moved. The ache, however, did not fade. It grew a name and a face. It became a nervous energy that made him kick the legs of his desk in class. That night, he took his old baseball glove

Boyhood, for Miles, was a series of crucial, unsolvable problems. He just held it for a minute, smelling