on colors, and other things

At bedtime, the night of the Rose Bowl: Do the Buckeyes have beds too? Do they have an extra one for me when I grow bigger and bigger? Is it red and gray?

To Tolliver, feeling blue and promised a pick-me-up by way of McDonalds: Are you going to order a Sad Meal today?

When asked to help fold towels, a real what-on-earth response: Only Mamas do laundry. 

Carrying around a measuring tape: Our house is ten legs! 

Do you mean feet? No, it’s ten legs long, watch! 

At the indoor pool, me in a (not new) red bathing suit: Mama I like your new red floaties.

marvel

The boys drew comics all weekend long, moving from the kitchen island to the dining table to the desk downstairs. Labeling folders for finished comics and works in progress. Asking Siri for synonyms, what's another word for steal, for cringe, for annoying. Offering each other ideas and helping each other sketch. Leaving eraser dust and lead fingerprints and paper scraps in their wake.

And I remembered how, for so many years, the boys seemed to inhabit every molecule of my personal space, their needs tendrilling out so compellingly that I couldn’t distinguish theirs from my own. But now, as they inch slowly farther from us, their worlds expanding and their independence growing, sometimes it is us pursuing them, wanting to be in their orbit.

We pushed pause on their projects for a ski lesson and the science museum, interrupted them to offer cereal and crab rangoon, to suggest math homework and piano practice. But otherwise they were drawing for hours on end.

Tucker has a notebook that he carries all over the house, constantly drawing. He sits up at bedtime with his little clip-on lamp, and draws almost every night before he falls asleep. This is amazing to me, when kids do stuff like this, stuff they just decide to do with no prompting, no suggestion, no encouragement, just all them, becoming themselves.

time and numbers

Lately Hank has been asking Siri what time it is. Like so often that her response doesn't change, because it hasn't even been a minute.

Also, he's been asking a lot for a sixth thing. First he wanted another chocolate chip, to put with the five he'd already arranged, because he needed a Celia. I thought he was just angling for more chocolate. But he has been reorganizing the framed photographs in the living room too, to show four siblings. And then he asked Andy to help him make a sixth play doh person to complete our family line up.

Missing someone confuses the truth about time and numbers.

long weekend, happy kids

first line of defense

The boys tend to fight boredom by fighting with each other.
We tend to redirect with wrestling or dancing or hugging it out.

normal day

The day began as most do, awakened by small human alarm clocks, washing berries and slicing bagels for breakfast, packing lunch boxes for school.

I remember the shirt I was wearing when we spent the day at the developmental clinic, nervous and nauseated and sweating. I trashed that pink sweater years ago.

We took the van to be serviced this morning, cooked chili and collected children, helped with homework and dance-partied to nineties hip hop before bed.

I recall the exact aisle of the store I was in when I received a devastating diagnostic phone call. I have not been back to shop there.

I threw away the clothes and abandoned the cart, but cannot skip the day on the calendar. The events of Januarys past threaten to affect the tenor in our house. It's a month that feels like it drags on anyway, a time of year that requires some defending against under ordinary circumstances. Like the card from Cel's grandma said: mid-January sucks.

I remember what my daughter felt like in my lap, more soul than body, rocking together toward heaven.
I've rocked three healthy boys in the same spot.

It's not quite a normal day, but I do my best to breathe through it, promise myself pause and permission to feel it. My sister tried to apologize for her mood recently (she is a little hormonal, but also completely radiant) and I reminded her that she's allowed to feel what she's feeling.
I am too.

It's not a straight line from bad to good, from sad to happy. But there has been so much magic over the years, in the space between heartbreak and hilarity.
We are not in search of some rare and perfect tomorrow.
We have carved out a life where we can be happy, even if it isn't quite the happiness we envisioned.
Turns out happy can be what happens when all your dreams don't actually come true.
I didn't know that being the mother of three boys was my dream until I became theirs.

The thing about death is that even when you think someone is gone, glimpses of them remain in those they left behind. We hear Celia in Hank's voice, see her in Tolliver's face, feel her in Tuck's hugs, and we remember that much of what we're missing lives inside of us.

possibilities

Piles of white pillows grew around the house over the weekend, a canvas of possibilities.
The wheelbarrow became a wagon ride, the slide became a luge, Hank's scarf became his snot rag.