remember the moments

I feel like I want to hold on and remember ever time he tells me he loves me. Today in the restaurant he was standing up in the booth, and he leaned on me, and I teased him about his messy face and smoothed his hair, and he leaned into me more and whispered, “Love you.”

And I just feel like I want to grasp that moment, make it solid, keep it on a shelf somewhere to look at whenever I want to. But, it would kill it, wouldn’t it?

So, I was in the kitchen getting a huge hunk o’ beef ready to throw in the Crock-Pot. My son was entertaining himself in the living room. I couldn’t see him, but I have a keen ear for his mischief. When I could no longer hear him, I went in to see what was happening, and I saw that he was diligently working to take all of the soil out of one of the (largish) planters with my kitchen tongs. There was soil everywhere. I was aghast, and it showed.

He looked up at me and my reaction, then down at his mess. Then he said, in a perfect mimic, “Oh, honey. What did you do?”

My thoughts exactly.

This morning my son was playing and ran off into his room. I stayed in the living room, and I could hear him playing. And then, suddenly, I couldn’t hear him anymore. I called out, “Honey, what are you doing in there?” He stuck his head out of the door, waved his hand at me, and shouted back, “Picking nose.”

Oh. Carry on then.

We were in the van, singing “Old Macdonald.” I always let him fill in the blanks, ”...and on that farm he had a __” and then he gets to make up the noises. He comes up with some very creative things. He picks weird animals, like kangaroos, and does not know what noises they make, so he says, ”...with a hop, hop here,” and it’s a very cool game.

Then one time he said “mama” in the blank. And I asked him, “Well, what does mama say?” He got a big old grin and then gave me his shocked look, his “oh, no” look. I could tell he really wanted to say “goddammit.” Ha. The kid knows me, that’s for sure.