The seasons of a new boy

It goes like this.

The sun beats down on you for the first time when we emerge from the birthing center. Your eyes are closed and your skin smells new and you’re so tiny that the world at once feels giant and welcoming.

Leaves change colors and so does your hair, growing in tune to your increasingly chunky body that snuggles into my shoulder as I take you with me everywhere – from backyard to refrigerator to stove. I master the one-handed egg crack and you master perfect slumber on the hip of a new mother; habitually swaying a tiny body back and forth, back and forth, like an autumn leaf drifting peacefully to the soft ground.

The world gets smaller when winter storms rage, and we create a universe in our two-bedroom upstairs apartment where exist warm baths and fuzzy pajamas and a big laugh from a tiny belly, rich as hot chocolate and deep as the snow.

Today you revel in the feel of damp grass beneath your still-tiny toes and fresh fruit on your jabbering tongue. Soon the sun will beat down again on a person who is no longer so new; whose eyes are wide open, whose knees are carpet burned, who far prefers dancing to snuggling, but whose cheeks remain as pink and delicious as strawberry cotton candy.

It goes like this. I race to keep up with the swiftly-moving seasons, which play like a movie that I am powerless to pause except in snippets of memory and two-dimensional Facebook albums. So I’ll revel, captivated, in each day and week and month. I’ll store up each fleeting laugh and cry and slobberkiss in my pounding, infatuated heart.

And I hope that once in a while you’ll still want to snuggle – even when wrinkles frame my face like the thousand winding pathways that lie ahead, and these seasons turn my hair into swirling winter snow.

Mothers and jackhammers

I woke up Saturday morning thinking of my mother.

Growing up, my parents had very different methods of waking up their children. Dad would quietly walk downstairs, sit on the edge of my bed, and rub my back. “Up and at ‘em,” he’d say gently. “I made you breakfast. Come on upstairs when you’re ready.” 

Mom, on the other hand, would swing the door open, turn on the lights, and open the blinds, letting the horrible light of sunrise shoot through to burn her daughter’s eyelids and make her cry out in unspeakable agony.  “Wake up! You’re going to be late!” she would say matter-of-factly, then list off all the chores I had already shirked on now that it was 6 a.m.  If I took too long, she’d promptly start vacuuming my bedroom. 

Likely, then, my mother would approve of the manner in which we’ve been awakened for the last two weeks.  Our morning begins with the repetitious “beep…beep…beep” of a giant piece of machinery on the road outside, warming up for another loud day.  Soon a jackhammer is added to the chorus, and men in hardhats start yelling at each other, and another giant tractor roars past and drops something large on something very metal.  As if by voodoo, someone drills a hole in the ground and it magically feels like an equally large hole is being drilled into my head. 

And it matters not how much I moan in anguish or cover my ears with pillows or swear profusely (in my brain).  There is no way these guys are going to let me sleep in on a weekend morning.

It occurred to me that if my mom’s method of waking up her children can be represented by the most obnoxious road construction possible right outside my window, then dad’s method would be like a light lilac-scented breeze that floats into the house and kisses my face, carrying with it the sunshiny promise of a wonderful day.  Basically, I guess, like every other Saturday morning, when I choose to ignore the promise and roll back over and sleep for four more hours.

And that’s why Dad’s way never, ever, ever worked.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.

Good morning, indeed.