ANTS AND TABS

"So here I am, taking care of ants! The ones you two left behind for me!"

I kept talking to Benício on the phone, walking him through the improvements I'd made to the ant farms. Sponges, syringes, cotton balls, crickets, sugar water, hard-boiled egg... all exactly the way he'd taught me.

Before the boys left to spend a week at Aunt Andreia's, Benício had left me a whole set of instructions for looking after the Camponotus novaeboracensis. There were two colonies: one he'd bought, and one he'd caught himself.

He was thrilled when he found out I'd actually spotted something that could have killed one of the colonies — and managed to fix it myself.

"I'm so proud of you, Dad! Thank you, really, thank you so much!"

I could hear the emotion in his voice.

"Don't mention it, buddy. This has turned into something I'm learning to love too. And it keeps us connected."

Pedro, the younger one, was watching over Benício's shoulder, peering at the screen, wanting to be part of that world but not quite sure how to get in. I could tell he was happy for his brother and his colonies, but something was missing — some bridge just for the two of us.

So I said:

"Hey, Pedro, you know what? You could've left something here for me to look after too."

He answered, half embarrassed, half defiant:

"But you wouldn't get me a dog!"

Fair enough. That's true.

The no-dogs-in-this-house rule is a royal decree, straight from Queen Adriana the First. No debate allowed. At some point, I more or less adopted the decree as my own.

Back in Brazil, having a dog made sense. Pichunho lived in the yard full-time, refused to set foot inside the house, gnawed on bones, disappeared into the woods and lived an almost feral existence.

Completely free.

Here in Canada, a dog just doesn't fit our practical view of the world. It would have to live indoors, and with all our long trips to visit family, someone would have to look after it — the way I'm here looking after the ants.

(I still think Pedro might have a point.)

But anyway, I try to talk myself into Adriana's reasoning, mostly to avoid a pointless argument.

So I told him:

"You know, buddy, Benício was pretty clever about it. He figured out it would never really be easy for us to keep an animal in the house — no dog, no cat, no fish, no turtle — so he shifted gears and turned that whole desire into ant colonies. He adapted."

Pedro gets it.

He doesn't like the decree, but he gets it. And he always finds something else to keep him busy on the inside — and even busier on the outside.

Still, I kept turning it over in my head: what kind of project could connect me directly with my little boy without a dog?

Anyway, they came back from their aunt's. They'd only be home for a week before flying out again, this time to visit their grandparents for almost a month. Every summer, Adriana takes the boys and puts together a whole string of trips across the Vilczak family map.

It was that week that I noticed Pedro had started collecting pull tabs from drink cans.

Not really grasping why any of it mattered, I asked him, a bit too matter-of-factly, what he wanted them for.

He couldn't really give me a straight answer. Something about a bracelet, a suit of medieval armor...

Adriana later told me Gisele's twins were collecting them too, and that it might be some kind of competition. Whatever it was, Pedro had gotten excited about it.

Every time I finished a can of sparkling water, there he was, pulling off the tab and dropping it into a Ziploc bag.

After five days, he'd only managed to collect about ten.

Frustrated with his progress, one Monday afternoon he asked if he and Benício could go look for cans in the neighbors' recycling, the bags they leave out for the truck early Tuesday morning.

I let the two of them go, as long as they didn't make a mess, leave garbage scattered around, or wander too far.

I watched them from the window.

They approached each house a little sheepishly, glancing around before carefully poking through the plastic bags, almost afraid to touch anything.

Pedro came back beaming, with another forty tabs or so. Proud of the idea and, even more, of having had the nerve to actually do it.

Then came the day they left for Brazil.

A week later, they were already there, and we were talking regularly on the phone. About their adventures, the chickens, the pigs, all the family news, the relatives, the ants...

During one of those calls, I asked to speak to Pedro.

"Pedro... guess what Dad's been doing?"

He tried a few guesses, none of them right, and was already running out of patience with the game.

Then, without saying a word, I held up my little cup.

More than a hundred aluminum rings.

For a second, he just stared.

"Seriously, Dad? You're collecting them for me?"

"Of course, buddy! The Mexicans at work drink so much pop and beer that every time I spot a can in the trash, I sort of crouch down when nobody's looking, pull off the little ring and slip it into my pocket! My goal is two hundred for us!"

"That's so cool, Dad! Thank you! Thank you so much..."

The truth is, I realized he'd probably almost forgotten about those little rings by then.

But when he realized I hadn't forgotten — and, more than that, that I was actually collecting them — he quickly added:

"I'm looking for them here too! But I don't think they're going to let me take them on the plane!"

Pedro got emotional in that particular way only I seem to notice.

Like the day I finally got his haircut exactly the way he wanted it. He kept looking at himself in the mirror, proud, feeling powerful — and he really did look powerful — and he couldn't stop hugging me and thanking me.

Now, every time we talk, he asks me how many little rings I've collected.

But I hear another question underneath it:

"How many times did you think of me, Dad?"

Here I am, on my own for more than a month, missing them as calmly as I know how. Trusting that I can let them go because I know there's a whole world out there for them to make their own.

And in the meantime, I stay here, tending the ants, eyes on the ground, looking for little metal rings.