Believe it or not, the title of this post could be considered directions from where we live to the Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge in Boston.

They’re in J-bear-ese, of course, but it’s still true.

We drive down I-93 south on a regular basis and there is nothing that J loves more in this world right now than to get into the car and drive down to “bridge”. Sometimes, any old bridge will do but more often than not it has to be his bridge, the majestic cable stay span of the Zakim in Boston.

The drive is amusing. Each street light is labelled “happy” because, when seen through his lens, they look like great big smiles. Then, as you get closer to the city, you come across “sad”, a span of streetlights where one side has lost its lamp. He chirps “I fix it!” every time we come across it. “Mad” appears when the “happy” streetlights change to a different sort and a few look like angry eyes.

This is most of our drives now, not just the ones into the city. He sees happy, sad or mad in so many shapes and places. He can spot a school bus at an incredible distance. He can notice all sorts of landscape details but he labels them all in his own manner so sometimes it takes me a few passes until I fully comprehend the wonder he is showing me.

I love it.

I hope he always sees happy, sad and mad everywhere and that the world always holds such vivid yet benign personality. This is how J sees the world and it feels like a gift when he shares it with the rest of us.

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Little bear is currently struggling with a case of pneumonia, the poor kiddo. It started right on his birthday too and has yet to let him go. He’s on antibiotics that hopefully will get him right as rain again but as we wait for them to kick in he is so wildly out of sorts. I am glad I trusted my instinct in thinking his cough sounded unusually terrible rather than letting myself write it and his unusually out of sorts behavior off before it could get much worse.

Now to hope he’s back to himself before summer school begins in July!