My bedroom door is shut and locked. It’s the middle of morning, right in between coffee and lunch. Cloudy days usually keep my mind in imagination mode and today is no different.

Outside of my bedroom window I hear a basketball bouncing in various rhythmic patterns. It was the neighborhood kids again.

Someone brought the basketball goal out of the garage and it didn’t take the other kids on the block long to gather around. It’s too early for my thirty-five year old body to fathom such activities so close to the upside of noon.

Yet my kids are running up the stairs and I hear them down the hall making the most horrible noises I’ve heard this Memorial Day while they put on their clothes. It’s only a matter of time now.

With the curtains pulled shut, the room dark enough to be late in the evening, my fingers are ferociously attacking the computer, the clicking of keys echoing throughout the vaulted ceiling in the room. I’m writing; I’m writing well…and I’m in a tunnel.

So I didn’t hear the first knock on the door, nor the second. But, when the knocks graduate to repetitive bangs, I thought the police were coming to serve me an arrest warrant. It’s time.

“I’m busy!” I call out to the boys.

My nephew, Jabari, nine years old and very much opinionated, yelled back, “it’s Khayla!”

It’s Khayla…Khayla is knocking at my bedroom door. It’s Khayla who placed the bomb in the tunnel and wrecked my writing flow. It’s Khayla…my lovely niece, twelve years old, the apple of my eye. It’s Khayla.

“I don’t care who it is,” I yell back, trying to sound authoritative while pretending to mean what I say. “I’m busy!” I continued.

Now, my son, Zion, also twelve years old and the loudest one of the three kids, chimes in.

“It’s Khayla, dad! She wants to ask you a question!”

It’s not long before my nephew kicks his heels together too. “Yeah, she wanna ask you something!”

Even the boys know that the girl gets whatever she wants. I’ve trained them well.

I yanked on the door handle without hesitation. Khayla is standing at the door with a cute smile on her face, her pretty hair touching her shoulders, and hands me a bottled water. I didn’t ask for water so I know this isn’t a love offering. No, this is a bribe.

“Can we go outside?” she asks me.

“Does that mean you’ll leave me alone this morning?”

She peels her eyes at me.

“I love you,” I sing to her.

She shakes her head and walks off. That was her way of saying it back…we have an understanding. After a while, the kids return and I get another knock on the door followed by a soft voice.

Again, no hesitation once I knew it was the girl.

“What and speak fast.”

“Why are you always looking at your computer?” she asks.

I shoot her a bewildered expression.

“You look crazy,” she says.

“I have good teachers,” I reply.

She didn’t get the joke. She thought I was referring to my friends when I was really referring to her grandparents…my parents.

She shakes her head at me when she says, “you must have a boring life to be looking at your computer all day.” Then she squeezes my neck way too tight, verging on strangulation, releases and then skips off.

My life is boring, she says.

One day she will understand that staring at my computer is more exciting than real life. One day she will understand that the make-believe worlds I create for the real world to read are more exciting than real life.

One day she will understand that her uncle…is a writer.