Andy and I celebrated our wedding anniversary last week, our eighteenth lunch at Lindey's after a pandemic pass last summer.
And then we left Tucker in charge of bedtime one evening to join friends for an intimate farewell dinner. We hadn't dined inside, with civilized conversation and cloth napkins and fine wine, in ages. I had nearly forgotten the joy of being together without three young men, of seeing Andy through the lens of other people instead of my same old worn out eyes. I had nearly forgotten the way it feels to simply be dressed and put together and ready to leave the house.
Some humming sense of continuity has returned, and I find myself leaving my phone on the table, sitting on the dock while the boys play in the lake, sweet little potato feet making wet prints on the concrete as they run back to the table for snacks. I don't have pictures of cousins squeezed together in one seat, lollipop sticks protruding from blue lips, of Hank hula-hooping with RoRo in the backyard or of Tolliver's glider trials from the treehouse. Life, for what felt like the longest time, was reduced to survival and domesticity, and now it's more full than I can document.
Finished with weeks of Safety Town and OWjL and a second sailing camp, some combination of the boys and I spend most days down the hill at the municipal pool. An instrument not an ornament, I remind myself sitting on the bottom, pinky extended for an underwater tea party. And again when, arms outstretched to make a ring, we all fall down. I am not the mom poised perfectly at the side of the pool. I am apparently not the mom taking photos of all the things either.
I texted Tucker yesterday, trying to gather everyone for dinner, but he'd been part of an organized egg toss two blocks over and his watch was too sticky to work. It's odd how, after looking at each other head on for an endless series of terrifying months, the children I fretted over are off on their own sunshiny adventures. I'm trying to remember how to balance it all, and to make time to share some of it here.
And none of it matters really, except in the small, ordinary way that all things can matter.
I did find a picture of the neighborhood posse admiring an assassin bug
1 comment:
I love when you share your family's adventures with us here, and I'm happy to know you enjoyed dinner out with friends. There's something wonderful about choosing to sit outside with friends and family now that it is an option instead of being the only safe way to spend time together.
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