My weekend bags were still in my hand when I saw my son bent over the sink with his dad examining a cut neither could see. Only it wasn’t the gesture that made me smile, so much as it was the overdose of green and yellow my husband had dressed them both in.
Someone had taken color coordinating seriously and, well, it was about the cutest thing I’d seen all day.
Until I saw these…
And smiled my heart out at home made masks…and the dad who made ‘em.
I did not anticipate reaching a speed past a mere jog. But that was before my son zinged past me on the downhill on his Christmas bike, both legs in the air and in their wake, two plastic training wheels creaking like decrepit canes all aimed at the parked white van on the corner.
That my son’s steering is shady is a sure thing. The scenery behind him is subject to more viewing than what lies ahead. Which has caused the kid to bounce off of more than one mailbox.
Only the white van hanging half in its driveway, half in the road was like a teaser for my son’s bike.
By which time I pretended my ‘to do’ list had an urgent request: ’pull hamstring at 4:37 p.m. sprinting after small child on bike,’ and I laid a bit of tennis shoe rubber down.
That my son would veer ten feet away from the van while looking back at his mother who was going to need a new lung and a non-victory lap was just as well. Only as I hobbled within distance of ‘saving’ my son, he jammed his brakes to a sudden stop and I…
I crumpled like a pretzel on his back wheel, arms up in surrender–completely mother-ed out.
Some time in the fifth grade, I wrote to the Chamber of Commerce in Fresno, California. Only I don’t know even the gist of the assignment or how I ended up with Fresno. None of which matters now anyway. I just remember that somebody in Fresno wrote me back.
And I wonder now if ‘seventh heaven’ can even describe my elation properly.
That my daughter wrote to the governor this morning is well, a bit more than I ever did. Or ever asked of her.
But after seeing the governor’s picture online, and learning a smidge about the office she holds, my daughter touched the screen and said, “I want to meet her.” Which was when she pulled out a piece a paper and asked how to spell the governor’s name.
And then didn’t look up for the next twenty minutes…
As she put her heart into her pencil and scrawled sentence after sentence…
Until it looked like this.
By which time my daughter sat back down and sharpened her colored pencils for a quarter hour. And then lost all track of time as she drew a detailed picture of Governor Gregoire looking out the window of the capitol building.
We folded both pieces together and sealed them in an envelope addresed to the governor or whatever soul opens the mail.
And with that done, my daughter squealed, “I just hope she writes back.”
Oh, friend…
so do I.
I sat down twice today. That I remember. Both times to use the bathroom and regroup for six seconds.
Only the library bathroom’s metal door didn’t stop my son from crawling underneath to check on my progress. Or from me seeing him slip out the main door before I’d retucked anything and flushed. If they heard me in the biography section yelling from the john, “get back here this instant,” nobody made mention of it.
At home, I’d gotten as far as closing the door and tearing the toilet paper, when a pair of used underwear showed up beneath the door frame still stuck to the stick that had poked them in.
I could hear the tee-hee-er in the hallway.
Only I didn’t tackle him once I ripped the door open like I’d planned.
I…
I hugged that kid who wanted every ounce of my attention.
And figured I’d regroup tomorrow.
As our son unzipped his pjs with news he had something to show us, I was certain it was his lack of underwear we were about to be front row and center to. And, well, I was prepared.
But he surpassed our expectations by first having underwear, albeit inside out and appearing to strangle what it was covering, then dipping into his drawers with his right hand and coming back out with a…
with a light bulb…heh…for his night light.
There really were no words.
And there were still no words after he reached in again and smugly retrieved the second bulb.
Only gasps.
By which time my husband and I shifted in our seats, pulled out our pointer fingers and simultaneously concluded, “that’s your kid.”
I don’t know the attraction. I only know that every few months or less, my daughter requests to watch the Cuisinart food processor ‘how-to’ DVD. And, well, I let her.
So for eight minutes while the gal in the green shirt shows my daughter how simple it is to assemble our food processor and how she should only handle the blade by grabbing the thing from the top, my daughter winds herself in a blanket and absorbs the whole spiel.
And likes it for the sixteenth time.
Then the chef with the receding shoulder-length do demonstrates how easy it is to make guacomole, and crab cakes and apple pie and pizza and meatloaf and nine other things with his food processor. And my daughter…
my daughter doesn’t move, save to turn her cheek and holler to anyone or no one, “this one’s my favorite.”
Which then becomes reason number 436 thousand why I love this kid.
I don’t know what–other than having forty birthdays–makes a person officially forty.
But that’s what my husband said, as he descended the last of the stairs, “I think I’m officially forty.”
Only he has been for eleven and a half months.
But then I saw him. And…heh. I got it. Before me in his new tweedish, zip-up sweater was, uh…Mr. Rogers.
By which time I smirked and said, “ain’t nothin’ forty about that sweater, Rog…
Try Fifty-two.”
It started with a little voting.
I raised my hand for Chutes and Ladders, and my daughter hers for Twister. I was all in for egg salad, and my daughter shrugged and said she was, too. We both voted the dog should stay out. And at three o’ clock with her brother around, we all voted to ride bikes.
We had the hang of this.
Which was when we went deeper…ahem… and talked about government leaders and how government leaders get to be government leaders. By which time I asked if she knew who our leaders were. Only she didn’t.
But when she did, she merely nodded, looked away for a moment, then asked with voice of intent, “has a woman ever been president?”
Pardon the creeping smile.
“Not yet,” I answered.
By which time she said with certainty, “I want to be the president.”
And, well, I couldn’t help myself.
And burst into a full smile with teeth.
She already had my vote.
Back when seatbelts were still a suggestion and more cars like our station wagon still had the mono-front seat where the driver could sit, as well as his six friends, and where for a little air, you had to roll down your own window with elbow grease…back when at least our car was like that, I was in the fourth grade. Only up until then, I hadn’t even had much experience rolling down my own window because…because I never got my own window.
By birth order alone, I was third in line for window controls. And on long trips. Fuh-gettabout-it.
Which everyone did until halfway to grandma’s that fourth grade year, I let heave the boot that’d been kickin’ my stomach the whole way over Steven’s Pass. Then with everyone’s attention, I squeaked for the fortieth time, “I just want some air.”
I only marvel at my mother who first thrust the frail garbage sack in front of my face and then held the bottom together with her hand until she couldn’t and then whirled the thing out the window without vomiting herself. Everyday heroics.
My dad…
My dad neither slowed nor stopped the car. Uh…no emergency here.
That my husband’s childhood bears the same mark means, uh…something. And what that is may never come to me. I just know that while our daughter is deep in her third book in the far back corner of the van, our son is rapidly changing shades up front. Pink-yellow-green. And then just green.
Which is what happened today. Only I gather my driving’s to blame.
I’d dropped both kids off with my mother-in-law who packed them in the back of her car to head back home the same windy route I’d just come. Only I referenced her with a wave of my hand that my son had said he was sick.
And since I gave illness no thought, I drove off one way. And my mother-in-law…
My mother-in-law drove off with a car sick kid and his sister.
By which time from the sounds of his moans she figured out all was not well in the backseat and rolled the windows down till they met the door trying to fan life back into my son.
My daughter took over as his mother, held his hand, whispered encouragement, patted him, and told him he could make it. That is, until it looked as though he wouldn’t. And my mother-in-law inched to the side of the road, unstrapped my green son and walked a few laps with him around the car.
My son didn’t perk up. But he didn’t lose his lunch either.
Minutes later, he would walk into my in-laws house, crawl into bed and sleep for two hours in the same position.
At eleven p.m., he would finally do the same thing in his own bed while I collapsed across the hall.
All was okay…
until the next corner of curves.
Unlike my son whose thoughts revolve around biting the butter, hugging the ketchup bottle and pleading for ice cream, my daughter merely wants to know what we’re doing tomorrow.
Which was why she sat up in bed with the attention of someone playing four bingo cards, and ticked off on her fingers all the things I mentioned we had going on. “That’s nine things,” she said, waving all but her second pinky at me.
Then her eyes changed to frisbees as she asked hesitantly, “do you think I can make a list of all the stuff we’re doing tomorrow?”
Only I leaned in her door frame another second trying to wipe the big “huh?” off my face, when she asked again.
“Do you think that’d be okay?”
But before I could breathe, she buzzed about making little boxes by each thing on her list, and then asked if I knew why, which I did, but then let her tell me anyway.
As I backed into the hallway, leaving the electricity of list making to my six year old, I did what seemed fitting.
I welcomed another Type A to the family.