Last week on the way home from school I asked Sean what he did in school that day.

“Nothing,” he said.

“Oh really? Not anything? You just sat at your desk with your hands folded for four hours?  I’m going to ask for my money back if they’re not going to teach you anything.”

This caused him to sniff in amusement.

“We had centers today.”

It was a crumb, but I take what I can get.

“Centers? Really? Reading?”

“No. Shopping.”

“Shopping Centers!” I laughed at my own joke.

“What did you buy?”

“Well!” he huffed, “I only had 75 pennies so I bought an electric pencil.”

“You mean a mechanical pencil?” I said rather than asked, “Good choice. Cool.”

“No, not cool.  I wanted to buy the bunny purse for you but it was like 100 pennies and then Karys bought it!” he whined with indignation.   “I didn’t have enough money!”

That was interesting because the last time we were at the school for a class party, AD noted that Sean had a huge stash of pennies in his cubbie while the other kids only had a few coins each. AD later suggested to me that Sean should set up a little business of making secured loans to the other children at a reasonable rate of interest. No, not usury. It sounds so ugly when you say it like that. Think of it as a math lesson in the power of compounding interest.

“A bunny purse?! You were going to buy me a bunny purse?!”  The very thought delighted and pierced my heart at the same time.

“Yes, it had a bunny on it with a nose and it was furry and pink on the outside and purpledy-pink on the inside and it had a nice zipper and a strap for your head.”  I think he meant a strap for my shoulder.  I tried not to laugh at the mental image of a bunny head purse.

“But Karys bought it!  I didn’t have enough money!”  The injustice caused his voice to leap an octave.

I looked in the rear view mirror to see his eyes beginning to swell with tears.  Didn’t have enough money. This thought stirred up ancient poor girl dust that never really settles out, but remains suspended in the soul for a lifetime.

In my mind, I could see him eyeing the bunny purse, turning it over and over in his hand, imagining how he would present it to me and how delighted I would be.  I imagined him counting on his fingers, working out the math. And then the disappointment, how it would fall from the ceiling and settle heavy over him, rounding his shoulders. I felt in my own heart the disbelief he felt when he realized the bunny purse was out of reach and worse, it was going home with someone else.  I know there is a good and powerful life lesson tucked away in the experience, yet it pains me all the same.

We drove another mile or so, neither of us saying a word.

“Well,” I finally said, “I have to tell you – I love that you would spend your money on me. That’s a very selfless big boy thing to do, and just knowing that?  That is a wonderful gift that would make any mom happy.”

This did not go far in salving his wound.

And you know what?” I continued, “There will always be people who will get stuff and have stuff that you want.  That’s just the way it is.”

Just recently I had been to someone’s gorgeous and fully accessorized home and felt a tinge of what he was feeling, familiar and bitter.

He sighed. Not what he wanted to hear. He wanted to hear how terrible Karys was for buying the purse out from under him.  That it was unfair.  That’s what I would want to hear.

But I didn’t say that.  I told him that even moms and dads feel that way sometimes.  I wanted him to know that, to be honest with him about that.

“But,” I said, “I find that if I can be grateful for what I have rather than disappointed over what I have not, that it makes it a little better.  A little.”

That’s a hard one to learn, and a lesson to be learned over and over. So I quit teaching and let it go.

When we got home, he disappeared upstairs, I assumed to contemplate upon the unfairness of life.

20 minutes later, he appeared at my desk. The cloud of gloom had lifted.

“Close your eyes and hold out your hands,” he said cheerfully.

When I opened my eyes, I was holding a bunny purse made out of construction paper, tape and staples.  My name was monogrammed on the front in purple crayon.

When life steals your bunny purse, make one out of construction paper.

I told him I couldn’t imagine any bunny purse anywhere nicer than this one.

And I meant it.

On Saturday, my friend Gigi hosted a Mother’s Day luncheon for her church.  She invited several of us to speak on different aspects of motherhood. I spoke on infertility and late-in-life motherhood. Others spoke on looking forward to motherhood, adoptive motherhood, step-motherhood, grand-motherhood, military motherhood and another gal spoke on what it’s like being a mother to a special needs child.

One lady lost her son in a tragically freak car accident when he was 32 and spoke about what a joy he was to her for the time she had him.  Each story was inspiring and sharpened my perspective and deepened my appreciation for how similar and yet how different everyone’s experience at this mothering gig can be.

The picture has nothing really to do with Mother’s Day other than to record that Sean spent the entire weekend running around Gigi’s farm playing with her grandchildren, covered in dirt and totally unaware that he had a mother.

As we drove home, Sean handed me a Wal-Mart bag from the back seat and wished me a happy Mother’s Day.  Inside was a card and a candle.  I suspect at some point I will own the largest collection of Wal-Mart candles in the state of Texas. I just pray that my collection will grow beyond 32.

The other day I was on my way to pick up Sean from school when I saw a man bent over on the sidewalk.  That is not something you see around here everyday, so it caught my eye and I slowed to see what was going on. And I couldn’t quite tell.

I couldn’t tell if he was having a heart attack and had dropped to his knees. I couldn’t tell if he had been jogging and was winded.  I couldn’t tell if he had stopped to examine a bug or perhaps he had just stopped to tie his shoes. But something about it sent my antennae up. Something was not quite right.

But I was running late as usual, so I didn’t stop.  After I retrieved my child from school, I circled back to see if he was still there.  He was, so I slowed and rolled down my window.

“You doin’ okay?” I called towards him from a safe distance.

He looked up, surprised.

“Yeah,” he sighed.  Then, “No. Not really.  I’m having a really bad day.”  He sounded tired, not so much in body but in spirit.  A fatigued spirit is the worst kind of tired; no amount of sleep or vitamins can restore a weary soul.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said sympathetically and empathetically. I’ve had a few days in my life where I’ve wanted to collapse in a heap on the sidewalk and cry.

“You wouldn’t have a cigarette, would you?” he asked from the sidewalk.

“No, I’m sorry, I don’t,” I said.

I look in my rear view mirror.  I can see Sean looking at the man through his rolled up window.  He is taking it all in with curiosity as though he is watching a movie waiting to see what will happen in the next scene.

Without any cigarettes, I could see that there wasn’t much beyond sympathy I could offer him, so I promised that I would send up a prayer for him.

Offering to pray for someone is a risky thing, and to be perfectly honest, I don’t do a whole lot of that sort of thing, particularly with strangers, but there was something desperate about the way he was hunched over on the sidewalk that evoked an upwelling in my heart and a desire to do something to relieve his burden in some small way.  He could have told me where to stick my prayers, but he didn’t.

He smiled just a little. I thought I saw a glimmer of hope, a tiny spark.

“Thanks man, thanks for stopping, thanks for checking on me, thanks…” he rambled.

“Hang in there,” I said. It didn’t quite convey the encouragement I wished for him, but it was all I could think to say.

He cut such a sorrowful figure standing there that I couldn’t help but to wonder what it was that had brought him to his knees on a sidewalk in the middle of the day.  I could think of a hundred things, maybe a thousand.

As I pulled away, Sean asked how we were going to pray for him.  “We don’t even know his name,” he pointed out.

“That’s true,” I said. “We don’t know his name and we don’t know what is troubling him, but God does.”

As we drove home, my little boy and I prayed for a man on a sidewalk.  It was all we could do.

One day last week or so, we got a bright and sunny day in the middle of what has been a long season of persistent gray and dreary.  So, when I picked Sean up from school I suggested that instead of going home, we should stop off at the local nature trail and go exploring.  And I could take pictures.

Yes, I had an ulterior motive.  Or, as I like to think of it, I had a plan with something for everyone.  I got to play with my camera and Sean got to pretend to be Bear Grylls.  And unleash some of that explosion-sound-making-Ninja-karate-chopping-little-boy energy into the pseudo wilderness.  Okay, that part was really for me too if you’re keeping score.

When we had gotten to the point furthest away from the car, he pointed to a log that had fallen across a shallow stream and asked if he could try to cross it.  I estimated that the worst thing that could happen is that he would fall in and get wet.  I told him he could give it a try if he wanted but that he should consider that if he fell in and got wet he would have to walk back to the car wearing wet clothes and shoes and that would not be very comfortable.

It was a risk he was willing to take, and frankly, I thought it was a good choice. A risk where the worst outcome is a little dirt or discomfort is a risk worth taking.

Aaaaand he fell in.

But he did not fuss or complain other than to say he was disappointed that we had to cut our adventure short. I helped him up the side of the muddy creek embankment and we headed back to the car to change clothes.

Sidebar:  If you are a new mom, here’s a little tip for you:  Always always keep a bag of clothes in your car with at least one change of clothes for your kiddo – pants, shirt, undies, socks and shoes, a light jacket or sweatshirt, wet wipes and a few plastic bags for the dirty clothes.  The bag of extra clothes I keep in my car has been a lifesaver many times over.  I usually keep clothes in the bag that we don’t mind parting with because on more than one occasion, we’ve had to outfit other children.  Just remember to change out the clothes seasonally.

As we were approaching the parking lot, Sean turned to me and challenged me to race him to the car and he took off running.  Not one to decline a challenge, I hugged my camera to my chest and trotted after him.

I watched him running ahead of me, coppery brown hair sparkling in the afternoon sunlight, his colt-like legs striding long and graceful.  It made me feel happy.  And I thought that it just doesn’t get any better than this.  “C’mon Mom!” he turned to yell at me as he continued to sprint towards the car.

In the weird slow motion time warp that is my mind I wanted to warn him to watch where he was going, to not run while looking back at me, because I could see that he was heading towards a row of parking stumps and I imagined him stumbling over them and crashing his perfect and precious form into the cruel pavement.

The impending scene played out so slowly in my head but so quickly before my eyes that I couldn’t make my lips form words of warning.  But at the last second, he turned and loped easily over the parking stumps.

I, on the other hand — who apparently can’t trot and have a complex thought at the same time — I began to stumble over air. My upper body got ahead of me and I began list forward as I was trotting along.  I’m a little top heavy to begin with but with the added weight of my Nikon around my neck aiding and abetting the laws of gravity, I went down hard on the pavement — knees, then hands and camera.

Sometimes when you fall, you know its coming and you think to yourself, “Uh oh, I am going to fall down.” This wasn’t like that. The space of time between realizing I was going to fall and realizing I was on the ground was deleted from the history of the universe.  It never happened. I was here and then there and the space between here and there was neither here nor there — it wasn’t ever there.

I was so focused on saving him from stumbling, that I crashed and burned myself before I knew it. Oh, if ever there was a Christian analogy.

I heard my camera hit the ground with an awful crisp metal crack.  The lens filter went flying and as I was splayed out face down out on the pavement trying to figure out what the heck happened, I heard it somewhere off to the side circling and spinning like a penny on its edge before it came to rest.  That was not a cheerful sound.

My hands were encrusted with parking lot pebbles and grit and felt like they were on fire. My jeans had clean scissor-like slits ripped in both knees which exposed a river of bright red blood. I couldn’t think clearly enough to decide whether to dig gravel out of my hands first or to see about the fate of my camera.

I felt very old and stiff.  And humiliated.   And I wanted to cry. Not because I was hurt, because I would heal (although it takes a lot longer than it used to) but what if I had busted my camera?  That thought was too agonizing to process.

Miraculously, due to the amazingly sturdy magnesium alloy construction that is Nikon, my camera was fine. No busted glass, no worse for the wear. And that is why I chose Nikon – I knew this would happen sooner or later. I have a long history with dumbassery and the scars to prove it. If there is a point to this story, and I’m not sure there is, it is this: Buy Nikon.

See what a nice crisp picture a Nikon can capture as it’s bashing into concrete?

As for me, I am not made of magnesium alloy, and I didn’t get off as easily as my camera.  Sean rushed back to me and helped me up, pausing only to marvel over the coolness that was my bloody knee.  He clapped his hands and then gleefully rubbed them together like a mad scientist and suggested that we should head home where he could “doctor me up”.

And so he did.  When we got home, I was instructed to wait in the bathroom until he could find his doctor kit. After scrounging around in his toy box, he returned to attend to the wounded.

I sat on the edge of the tub while he donned surgical gloves and dabbed at my knee with a wet paper towel.  He listened to my heart with his stethoscope and gave me a shot in the thigh, just in case.  He very gently put on a dollop of “Neopesporverin” and then two or seven band-aids.  And then offered to share a Tootsie Pop with me.

And I have to tell you — that memory alone is probably worth the price of a scraped knee.

The doctor is in.

My hard disk died a week or so ago.  I knew it was coming. It had been complaining loudly and moaning and groaning for quite some time and then one morning, it gave one last long gasp.  The skies went dark and the blue screen was torn in two.

And I didn’t even care. In fact, it was liberating. The death of my PC was a sweet release in a way.

I was cut off from my on-line world except for my iTouch — which is a good device for lurking to some degree, but not much for participating. That teeny tiny keypad is not very useful for 50-year-old eyes.

The fact of the matter is that for some time now, I’ve been feeling like Forrest Gump in that scene where he is jogging down the highway out in the desert with all those people following him and he just stops. He’s been running hard for five years and one day, he just stops.  He doesn’t really know why.  It just seems right.  He turns and tells all the people that he’s tired now and he’s going home.

That’s sort of how I’ve been feeling about blogging lately, just sort of called away, feeling like it’s time to slow down, be quiet, do something else, invest elsewhere.  I don’t plan to stop completely, I don’t think so anyway, but I’m going to take away some of the time and energy I give to this blog and invest it in my photography and elsewhere.  Is that called balance? I don’t know.

There’s probably a bit more to it than that, which I don’t fully understand, but I feel like I’ve entered a new season of life and I don’t know to what degree blogging fits in. We’ll just have to see.

So there’s that…

This morning Sean and AD were at the breakfast bar and for some reason we were talking about fancy restaurants and how they are different from the kind we frequent.

I told him fancy restaurants usually have table cloths, flowers and a waiter who brings you a menu.

Sean added, “And they usually have hang down lights at the table too.”

I said yes, that was often the case. I thought that was an interesting observation and tried to think of any fancy restaurants we might have taken him to where they had hang down lights (which in the design world we call pendant lighting) but I drew a blank.

“Just like at Panda Express!” he said.

I like the size of his world right now, where Panda Express with its hang down lights is a fancy restaurant.