The other day Sean and I had a couple of errands to run.  It was an ugly sort of day, a day much better suited for staying home, but we had some things that had to be done, so off we went.

As we were driving along, we made up a game to see how many words we could come up with to describe the day.

I started with the obvious, “Damp.”

“Gray,” he countered. It was true. It was a monochrome day, gray from ground to sky.

“Cold,” I added.

“Still,” he said slowly.  The world did seem particularly still in spite of the traffic.

“Um, let’s see…melancholy.”

“What does melancholy mean?” he asked.  I told him that melancholy is sort of like when you feel damp and gray and still on the inside.

“Oh,” he said satisfied. “My turn.”

The car fell silent as he looked out the window and searched for another word to describe the day.

“Dull,” he finally said.

“Dull indeed,” I said. Dull was the mood of the sky.

“You know because when it’s sunny, the world is shiny,” he explained.  “But when it’s cloudy, the world looks a little dull.”

When I pulled up to a stop light, I turned to look at my little boy in the backseat.

He was looking out the window at the dull sky.

As we waited for the light to turn green, he pointed out a coyote slinking along the railroad tracks under the fog.  He wondered out loud where the coyote lived.  He spotted a shoe along side the road and wondered how it got there.  He thought about the person who was missing a shoe.  He pointed out the white plume of exhaust rising off a tall building and a line of black birds resting on the power lines.

This boy reminds me that from time to time, the sky may be dull, but the world around us never is.

I am just popping in to say hello and season’s greetings and merry Christmas and all that good stuff.  I hope your holidays have been bright thus far.

We have had a Norman Rockwellian sort of Christmas here at the House of Antique. We had a lovely snowfall on Christmas eve and even built a snowman.  We have had company and baked cookies and sang carols and thoroughly enjoyed the sparkle and light a six-year-old brings to the season.

I got a robe for Christmas, not a Rob as I was led to believe. Guess I’ll have to run my own errands.  Sean got an archery set and not a Barbie Dream House as I led him to believe.

In the years to come, I doubt that we’ll remember the gifts or even the snow, but that we were well, warm, fed and all together; that we lacked nothing.  It doesn’t get any better than that, does it?

* * *

The picture in the snow globe is one AD took today of Sean and me while we were out walkin’ in a winter wonderland.  I made the snow globe in Photoshop using the  PanosFX snow globe action, a free download.

Sean was born six weeks early and spent the first week of his life in the NICU.  He was teeny tiny, but was never in any danger, other than being sent home to live with two clueless people.

Before we left the hospital, the nurse showed me the proper way to wrap my baby in a blanket. She stressed the importance of keeping his arms tucked in tight at all times. She said he was used to be being curled up in the confines of my womb and he would prefer being swaddled.  She said that if he were allowed to flail his arms freely, he would feel insecure thusly destroying his sense of well-being and possibly leading to a life of crime.  Only the worst kind of mother would allow flailing.

Perhaps all that was implied, I don’t really remember.  In those days, uneven hormones along with the dauting task of caring for an infant made everything seem reallllly critical.

I felt a measure of confidence as I watched the nurse swaddle my tiny new baby because I had made burritos before and I recognized that she was merely making a yummy baby burrito. Nothing hard about that.  Having passed swaddling 101, they released us to take our baby home.

When we got home, the first order of business was to change his diaper and then wrap him up in the prescribed manner at which I was an expert.

I laid him ever so gently diagonally across the blanket.  Just like the nurse, I folded the bottom of the blanket into a triangle and pulled it up and over his feet.  I then pulled the right side of the blanket tautly over him, rolled him forward a little, tucked it under and then repeated left to right.

Voila!  I stood back and admired my work. All that was missing was a bow!  But then, like Houdini, he began to twist and squiggle until he had freed his right arm which he began waving over his head like a flag.  And then he pulled out his left arm.  And then he began flailing both arms with all his might.  He seemed to be saying, “Look at me! I’m flailing! And you can’t stop me!”

“Stop it baby!” I cried, “Stop flailing! Do you want to end up in jai!?” At which point he wadded up the blanket and threw it across the room.

I retrieved the blanket and rolled him up in it again and again.  No matter how tightly and expertly I swaddled him, he pulled his arms out in record time.  When visions of duct tape began to dance in my head I conceded.

On my very first day of motherhood, I learned this very important lesson:  You can swaddle a baby but you can’t make them keep their arms in. Without duct tape.  I also realized that when it comes to babies, expert advice is really only a suggestion.

Six years later, nothing in that regard has changed – I swaddle, he unswaddles, I tuck, he untucks, I wrap, he unwraps, I do, he undoes.  It’s the pattern of our lives.

Nearly every night I peek in on Sean just before turning out the lights to find him sleeping with his arms outside the covers.  I lean over him and kiss his forehead and then like a good mother, I pull the covers up under his chin and tuck his arms securely under the blanket.

And when I turn to take one last look before leaving the room, he pulls his arms out and flops them on top of the blanket.

You can tell from the look on his face that he is plotting how to get out of the swaddle.

This post is from last December.  It is still applicable.

* * *

One day last week, Sean and I spent the afternoon putting up Christmas decorations.  I used to really enjoy decking the halls, but I have come to a point in life where it seems to be more work than fun.

As I root through box after box of stuff, I wonder if hanging fake glittery stuff on a fake tree only to be removed and boxed up again in 30 days is a good use of my time and energy, both of which seem to be in short supply these days.  Sparkle and glitter and garland is not really what the season is about after all.

But then I look at my little five-year-old boyfriend who is totally into Christmas and the decorating and how he is thrilled with each ornament, even the cruddy ones. I realize then that it’s worth it because one day too soon he will be too busy or too cool to spend an afternoon decorating for Christmas with his mama.  And oh how I will rue the day.

That thought however did not stop me from lying down on the living room floor in an attempt to stave off that spinning sensation of being overwhelmed that often comes with the holidays but this year seems to be magnified in light of the economy and world and personal events.

As I lay there on the floor trying to create some order in my mind so that I might create some order in my life, Sean wanders over and straddles me with his hands on his hips.  I feel like the worker who has been caught napping in the janitor’s closet.  He  plops down on my tummy.  He leans over and looks me square in the face.  He searches my face with a furrowed brow, lips pursed in concern.  I’m afraid that he knows, that I’ve not done a good job of keeping my adult worries and cynicism to myself.

“Mom?” he asks as he leans over me.

“Yes?” I say, bracing myself.

“Did you know that you have farkles on your face?”

He draws his face closely into mine and like a surgeon,  he ever so delicately plucks a dot of glitter from my cheek.

“See?” he says, holding his be-glittered finger one inch from my eyeball, “Farkles!”

He jumps up, ready to keep going.

“C’mon mom, let’s keep decorating!” he cries with glee as he tugs on my arm.

This boy, he is good medicine for a bad attitude.

I decide that for him, that I would do a better job of at least pretending to find joy in the fake and sparkly, that I would be careful not spoil these few precious years in his life when the world is small and uncomplicated and magical.

So for now, for the boy, my attitude shall be like my tree — fake and sparkly.  And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.