Several months ago Sean had his friend Marlee over to play.  I banished them out to the backyard where they had a terrific time collecting poor unsuspecting roly poly bugs, dragging all the toys out into the yard, playing in the sandbox and digging up what would be my flower beds if I ever get around to putting in seasonal color. Unlikely.

At one point, I looked out the back windows to check on them and they were hauling sand from the sandbox up to the house and pouring it all over the stone path and the patio.  So I opened the door and asked them not to do that and to please keep the sand in the vicinity of the sandbox.

And that was that.  I never gave it another thought.  Not one.

Yesterday, I’m sitting at my desk working on my computer, and out of the wild blue yonder, Sean comes to me and puts his hand on my leg, his sign that he needs to tell me something.  I stop typing and turn and look at him.  He has his shirt on backwards and there is evidence of a blue Popsicle on his face.  My heart stops momentarily when I realize that I had a hand in this marvelous creation.

“Mom,” he says seriously, “There is something you need to know.”

I look at him and widen my eyes to indicate that I am all ears.

“Remember when Marlee came over and we were in the backyard?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it was her idea to take the sand out of the sandbox.”

I blink slowly and widen my eyes again to indicate I’m waiting for the rest of the story.

He looks at me with wide blue eyes and blinks.

I blink back and wait for context.

“And?” I finally ask.

“I just wanted you to know that.”

As I look into his face that is mine, I was impressed with his terrific memory and baffled that he would carry around an obscure meaningless event and then dredge it up for no obvious reason.

God help this child, he is just like his mother.

Then I blinked again and wondered how to teach him not to hang on to this kind of stuff, how to teach him the fine are of letting go.

This here is a boy after my own heart.

We love art and words and cooking and taking pictures and telling stories and clouds and collecting leaves and rocks and silliness and hanging out together doing nothing.

And I want to do as much of that as possible with this boy before he grows up and has a change of heart.

When Sean was about two, I bought him one of those kindergarten mats at Walmart.  I’m sure you know the kind I’m talking about:  plastic, red on one side and blue on the other, folds into fours.  If you are like me, you probably had one yourself when you were in kindergarten. And that is exactly the reason I bought it — because I had one. Nostalgia, pure and simple. That and impulse.

Be that as it may, we have had that mat for three years now and so far it has not once been used as mat upon which to nap.

The first year we had it, the mat was a ticket booth. Sean would set it on its edge into a square. He would then stand inside the square and alternately take and sell invisible tickets, just like a little scalper. Over the course of any afternoon I would buy and redeem hundreds of tickets. I was a loyal and enthusiastic customer.

The next year, the mat was a boat. He would lay it out on the breakfast room floor and spend hours outfitting it and laying in supplies for the journey – a tiny lawn chair with a built-in umbrella, Goldfish, sippy cup of milk, matchbox cars, plastic animals, books — you know, all the seafaring necessities. And then he and I would set sail for far away places.

This year the kindergarten mat is a surf board. He puts it on top of the coffee table and hangs ten.  I stand on the back and shoo the sharks away.

And now, this school year is about to come to a close.  In September he will start kindergarten.

And maybe then, the kindergarten mat will be a kindergarten mat.

I was standing at my laundry sink the other day cleaning mud off of Sean’s shoes when AD came in and asked me what I was doing. We stood there and chatted for a few minutes as I scrubbed.

He remarked that he couldn’t remember the last time we bathed Sean in the laundry sink.  I stopped to think for a minute and I couldn’t remember either.  The season of laundry sink baths had quietly slipped away and we didn’t even notice.

When I brought Sean home from the hospital he weighed four pounds and I was, for the most part, terrified of him.  He was just so little and scrawny and I didn’t seem to have any natural mothering instincts the first few weeks.

One of the scariest things to me as a new mother, other than trimming those itty bitty fingernails, was bathing him.  I couldn’t find any place in our house conducive to bathing a little four pound humanoid.

Leaning over the bathtub just didn’t work for me. For one thing I had this incision across my belly and even after that healed it hurt my back and knees to lean over the tub. It was just an uncomfortably awkward position that seemed to fight against my center of gravity and made bath time joyless.

I tried using the little baby bathtub on the kitchen counter and even on the vanity in my bathroom, but our counters are extra tall and I’m not extra tall.  When you add the height of the baby tub and a slippery wet baby, it just felt terrifyingly precarious — not at all relaxing and serene as they show in the Johnson & Johnson ads.  There wasn’t enough room for the towels and soaps and I was always bumping something off or having to stretch to reach what I needed while keeping one hand on a squirmy wet baby while water sloshed down the front of me and the cabinets.  It made me cry big fat “I can’t do this mommy thing” tears.

Eventually I figured out that I could set the little baby bathtub into the sink in our laundry room.   Of course, a woman bathing her baby in the laundry sink wasn’t going to make the cover of Greatest Parents Ever magazine, but it was great for my height and I could put all the stuff I needed on the washer which was right at arms length.  Once I figured that out, we bathed him in the laundry sink all the time and bathing my baby became one of the sweetest tasks of the day for all parties concerned.

It wasn’t long before we were bathing him in the laundry sink without the baby bathtub and then it seems that I blinked and he was sitting up by himself in the sink and then I blinked again and he was scaling the cabinet and climbing in all by himself.

And just like a baby in the womb, he grew and grew and grew until his long legs were all tucked up under his chin when he sat in the sink.  And I guess, being the astute parents that we are, we did sort of notice every once in a while that he was getting kind of big for the laundry sink.  But mostly we saw not the long and lanky legs of a growing boy, but our baby.

Somewhere along the way last summer he started occasionally bathing in the tub in his bathroom.  But then at some point unmarked by fanfare, it became always the tub and never the laundry sink.  And now, as I stood there scrubbing mud off his tennis shoes, I couldn’t remember the last time we bathed him in the laundry sink.

That’s the thing with these non-Hallmark moments and milestones of childhood, there is no cake or cards to mark the occasion when something ends.  Unlike the beginnings, you only notice that you’ve moved beyond the milestone long after the fact.

The days of babyhood blend quietly and seamlessly into childhood in weeks and months, one season folding imperceptibly into the next.  It gives me a bit of heartburn to understand that the only way to see that is from a distance.

The season of laundry sink baths had quietly slipped away and we didn’t notice.

We didn’t even notice.

Or I would have baked a cake.

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I remember the first time I heard Sean call me mom instead of mommy.  It was in the Wal-Mart parking lot.  As we got out of the car, he reached up and grabbed my hand and said in his best grown-up voice, “You better hold my hand mom, parking lots can be dangerous.”

I remember how my ears perked up when he said mom.  It was an awakening sort of sound, like at a wedding when someone clinks a spoon on a wine glass — a sound that rises above and is out of rhythm with the other noise of life and makes you stop what you are doing and take note of the moment.

It seemed that in that moment we crossed over an invisible line – mommy on one side and mom on the other, baby on one side and boy on the other.

But the other day, he slipped up and he called me mommy.  He didn’t even notice it, but I did.

And once again, it was the clear call of a tiny bell that says,  stop and listen, take note.  It was a sweet sweet sound in my ear, to be called mommy again, for the first time in a long while.

I wanted to stand very still and savor the moment because I know I won’t be crossing back over that invisible line into babyhood again. We have gone too far.  And honestly, I don’t desire to swim against the currents of time.

But it sure was nice to visit.

If I am to be honest, I would have to say that this was not the merriest Christmas on record.  Having said that, we are well and we are fed, so it’s also not the worst Christmas on record either.

I will not bother to whine about the particulars because I doubt that I am the only person in America who has been slapped upside the head by life lately or that my woes are worthy of mention compared to those that I know many of you are suffering.

In addition to all that, shortly after lunch on Christmas day, my mother-in-law’s twin brother came to the backdoor unannounced.   Aunt Jean and I were in the kitchen washing up the lunch dishes when Uncle Leo appeared in the doorway.

I could see in his face that he had come to deliver the news we had all been expecting.  “Pearl is gone,” he said quietly and matter-of-factly.  After a long illness and untold suffering, Aunt Pearl had finally yielded the pain of this life to the sweet relief of death. And I did not blame her. She was 85-years-old.

Later that afternoon, AD and Sean and I went for a walk around the block to clear our heads and to see if we could find our misplaced merry.  The sun sparkled brightly through leafless trees and the December air was cold and cleansing; its sting felt good on my face.  AD and I walked hand-in-hand, listening to Sean chatter as he trotted ahead of us, collecting pine cones for me to carry home.

Before we were home, I realized that next year and in the years to come,  I won’t remember the sorrows of this season, for they too shall pass.  I will only remember how Sean’s hair shimmered like a brand new penny under the winter sun and the prickly feel of a pine cone pressed into my hand.

* * *

What will you remember of this holiday season?

Every night before bedtime, and sometimes before school, Sean and AD will read at least one chapter from a book of children’s classics.

Having gone through most of the other more exciting and well known titles, we are down to Pollyanna. But he is just as enthralled with Pollyanna as he was with The Swiss Family Robinson.

Stepping up to chapter books like Tom Sawyer and Oliver Twist has presented many opportunities to talk about some of the more unsavory and unpleasant aspects of life.  Many of the characters are orphaned or suffer cruelty at the hands of those who should protect them.  And there is always a concern to AD and me over how much of this kind of information is appropriate for a five-year-old.

But the thing about Sean that continually amazes us is how wise he is beyond his years and how tenderly perceptive he is about the human condition and matters of the heart.  Although we would certainly like to claim credit for that,  it’s simply the way God made him.

If you don’t recall or haven’t read the story of Pollyanna, she is a young girl who was orphaned and goes to live with her Aunt Polly who is a cold and crusty middle-aged spinster.  Aunt Polly suffered a thwarted romance early in her life which left her bitter and she has never gotten over it.  Aunt Polly has a big house, yet she makes Pollyanna sleep in a hot, stuffy, bleak attic and in general gives Pollyanna no affection.  Nonetheless, as the story goes, it is Pollyanna’s way to see the silver lining in every gray cloud.

At one point in the story, AD stopped reading and looked over the book at Sean who was lying in bed.  “Why do you suppose Aunt Polly is so gruff?” he asked.

“I think she has a children ache,” Sean said quietly.

“Oh Sean,” AD sighed, “I think you are so right. A lot of times when people are gruff on the outside, and sad or mean, it’s because they are hurting on the inside.”

It’s true. I had a children ache once too.

Yesterday afternoon, I heard a muffled scuffling banging sound coming from Sean’s room.   I somehow knew it was him hanging by one hand like an orangutan from the upper hang rod in his closet with the other hand blindly reaching, swiping and digging for something in the deep dark recesses of the closet.  I also knew that he was standing tip toe on one foot on a precariously positioned stool that was about to tip over while he balanced his other foot on the lower hang rod, all but knocking off the fall and winter clothes I had just organized and hung there the week before.

I can’t really describe the sound to you because it’s like a dog whistle – only moms can hear it.  And when moms here this sound, their ears perk up and they think, “Rut-roh. Dats not good.”

So I quickly dried my hands and dashed into his room where I found him in his closet hanging by one hand like an orangutan from the upper hang rod and desperately reaching for something buried in the back with the other hand.  Just like it sounded.

“Dude, dude, dude,” I said as I pulled him off the home style uneven bars, “What are you doing?”

“I’m looking for my pirate suit,” he said.

I had in fact hung the pirate suit in the very back of the closet thinking he would forget all about it. It barely fit him when I bought it a month or two ago and it has since been washed and accidentally dried in the dryer.  Nonetheless, I pulled out the pirate suit and handed it to him.

He quickly stripped down to his skivvies and wiggled into it.

“Velcro me up matey! Will ‘ya?” he ordered, turning his back to me with his hands on his hips.

“Aye aye Captain,” I said and then like a sales clerk in a bridal shop, I did my best to squeeze my too big customer into a too small costume, tucking and tugging, pulling and praying, coaxing the Velcro together with all my might.

When he turned around, he was so blindingly cute that I lost my peripheral vision and the part of the brain that does math and reasoning.  I reached out to him and pulled him into my lap so we were nose to nose and was surprised when he willingly obliged. He smelled sweet and of cinnamon, like graham crackers.

“Give your mommy a hug Captain,” I ordered him.

He playfully pushed me to the ground and I pulled him into my chest and quickly hugged him before he tried to squiggle away.

But he didn’t squiggle away.  Instead, he wrapped his arms around my neck, nestled into me and stayed there.

So I laid there on the floor on my back with my arms wrapped around my 4-year-old pirate boy and watched the ceiling fan go round and round.  He twirled my hair and I ran my finger up and down the miraculous thing that is his spine and listened to him breathe. No words were spoken.  I did not want the moment to pass because I never know when it will be the last time before he will be too busy or too big to spontaneously snuggle with his mom on the floor.  Four has been sweet and funny and joyful beyond what should be legal.

Five is on the horizon and I know it will bring its own brand of joy, but I would give just about anything for more four. Please.

When I was growing up I loved and looked forward to Halloween. My brothers and I and the forty or so kids who lived in the neighborhood would start talking about what we would be for Halloween shortly after school started in September.

The years that Halloween fell on a Saturday or Sunday, we would spend the entire day scavenging for and cobbling together a costume. The ghosts in our neighborhood wore sheets with paint splotches the color of their living room. No one had a “store boughten” costume. Unthinkable.

Long before the sun would set, four or five kids would crowd around the mirror in our tiny bathroom, elbowing for space. We painted our faces with left over craft paint, the gouged out remains of an old spot of blue or green eyeshadow or one of my mom’s old tubes of blood red lipstick. We’d rat up our hair and drench it in hairspray and practice scary faces holding up our hands Dracula-style.

Then, just as the sun began to set, 10 or 15 kids at a time would set off screaming down the street with brown grocery bags, going from house to house, descending like a horde of locusts hollering TRICKORTREATSMELLMYFEETGIVEMESOMETHINGGOODTOEAT! And hooboy! Wasn’t that funny?!

Amid the safety net of 20 kids, we’d roam a two-mile radius around the house for three or more hours. Our bags would be so full of candy we could hardly carry them and occasionally you’d see someone whose bag had broken, on their knees on the sidewalk, crying over their lost booty.

Last year, Antique Daddy took Sean out trick-or-treating in the neighborhood while I stayed home and ate miniature Snickers waiting for the goblins to arrive at the door. Kids trickled up the sidewalk two and three at a time, escorted by their parents who were in the background hissing, “Say trick-or-treat! Say Happy Halloween! Say thank you! Did you say thank you!?”

Halloween seems so much more lonely an event these days, at least in my neighborhood. The singular Ariel or Ninja that comes to my door makes me nostalgic for the gangs of ghosts splattered with Sherwin William’s Burlap Beige and hobos wearing their dad’s work pants cinched up around their armpits.

As I stood at the door watching a tiny princess and her daddy make their way to the next house, a skeleton emerged out of the darkness and made his way up the steps. He was an apt skeleton weighing no more than a bucket of green beans. “Trick or treat!” he called to me cheerfully. I estimated him to be about 10-years-old. I looked beyond him into the darkness, but there was no one. I looked into the eyeholes of his mask at his bright brown eyes. I could tell he was smiling at me. I dropped a handful of candy into his bag. “Thank you ma’am!” he said looking me in the eye. Then he turned and started down the steps. “Wait a minute!” I called him back. “Here!” I said, dropping two more handfuls of candy into his bag. “Happy Halloween to you Mr. Skeleton!” “Wow! Thanks!” he called as he disappeared into the darkness. All alone.

I watched him until there was nothing but darkness beyond the bright porch light. I heaved a heavy sigh. Something about the slightness of his form, his cheer, his courtesy that made me think of my little goblin, who will never be one of a roving gang of paint-splattered ghosts, but a polite, lonely skeleton. And that sort of makes me sad.

Originally published November, 2006

Every morning when I pull out of the drive way to take Sean to school, Antique Daddy stands in the garage waving and wiping tears and Sean sits in the backseat, waving and wiping tears. And I’m like, “Dudes, get a grip. We’ll be back right after lunch.” I am crusty.

We are a family that spends a lot of time together. Antique Daddy works from home and rarely travels and as a stay-at-home mom, I’m at home a lot as well which works out for the most part, but we get a lot of togetherness. So this past week when I travelled to Las Vegas for about four days, it was one of the rare occasions when we were not all together.

And I have to be honest with you, I enjoyed my time away. I enjoyed sleeping in my own bed, eating whatever and whenever I wanted and basically reverting back to the day when all I had to think about was my own comfort. It was kind of nice not to have to wipe anyone’s butt or look for shoes that were not my own for four whole days.

But on the day I packed my bag to go home, I was ready. I had enjoyed a taste of being self-centered and it was yummy and refreshing, but a taste was just enough.

As the plane hurled eastward through the pink sky of a setting sun, I looked forward to being with the two people that oft times drive me nutty with their daily tears and waving and inability to keep track of their own shoes. But I also thought about the people who taught the classes I had attended. I’ve been to their web sites and seen their travel schedules and I don’t know how they do it. Not just the exhausting pace and the gypsy lifestyle, but spending so much time away from the people they love.

Tonight, I slipped into Sean’s bedroom after he fell asleep to take one last look at him and turn off the lights. It seemed to me that he had grown in the four days I was gone. He had fallen asleep with a book in his hands. I gently lifted the book away and removed the die cast cars and the assortment of plastic crud treasures he hauls into his bed every night like a pack rat.

I flashed back to the days of his infancy when I would check on him and he would be asleep with his fat little knees and hands tucked up under his chest and his tiny bottom in the air. I would cradle his velvety bald head in my hand and pat his bottom. I would lay my hand on his back and feel it rise and fall with each miraculous life-sustaining breath. I would measure the sole of his feet with the length of my finger. And when the urge to pick him up out of his crib and sniff his neck and wrap him up in my arms became too hard to resist, I would turn and leave the room. You never wake a sleeping baby. Grandmas do, tired mommys don’t.

Now, as I looked down upon a boy who is ready to read books and whose frame fills the bed from end to end and whose foot measures beyond the length of my finger, I cursed myself for not giving in and lifting him out of his crib more often.

It seems to me that God gives you just the tiniest taste of the sweetness of infancy, just enough to always remember there is nothing else like it and once it’s gone, you spend the rest of your life longing for just one more taste. There are other sweet things in life that follow, that replace it, but there is nothing else like it.

The urge to pick him up out of his bed and sniff his neck was as overwhelming as ever, but the days when that was possible are all but over. I wondered where his dreams had taken him tonight. I stood and prayed over him and then I bent down and cradled his head with my hand and kissed him lightly on the forehead. When I stood to leave I noticed his foot sticking out from under the blankets. I pressed my hand to the sole of his foot and measured it.

In life, sometimes a taste is enough and sometimes it’s never enough.