It's really happening!
You can see it; you can feel it - springtime's comin'!
(Ahhh, there's no confusion here!)
Patches of snow remain only in the shadiest of places.
Rocks have appeared, and shirt-sleeves, too...
Along with open water and mud boots - some of the best of spring's wonders - especially when the water goes over the boot-tops and fills the inside, icy-cold.
Invigorating!
Yes! Lovin' the power of the sun in these blue-sky days!
{Photos taken by the six-year-old boy}
Doesn't matter that the camera settings were a little off. Doesn't matter that he took 101 million shots of everything and nothing.
It doesn't matter.
Because you'll gladly pay the price of those 101 million shots to get a few like these:
From his perspective. At a smidge under four feet.
He chattered away as he clicked away.
Talking about everything, and nothing at all.
He did say, though, just how much he loves sitting on the corner counter there in the kitchen, with his feet dangling.
You knew that by how often he sits there.
And by how many times you've found his little toy men in your corner spice cupboard.
But now you know it even more. Because he said it.
And the other thing you know?
You're in love. Clearly, by the look in your eye when you look at your boy.
My heart is wrapped up in three little men. I can tell because the purple and red cardstock came out with me in the early morning hours (while everyone still slept). So did some fancy ribbon, tootsie pops (good thing there were still three left after my little men had found the hidden stash the day before!), bran muffins, and of course, pink milk. Three poems scripted, the table set, and then, with the sun rising, so many smiles and shouts of excitement.
It always amazes me how they get tickled with the littlest of things.
My heart is pretty wrapped up in one big man, too. Oh, yes. For him, a card and some fancy chocolates hidden in the bottom of his lunchbox, which my cowboy found after a morning of finding and doctoring sick calves. There he sat, at the top of the hill in his old beat-up ranch truck, getting warmed by coffee, sweetened by chocolates, and loved by a note from his girl.
It always amazes me how he gets tickled with the littlest of things.
I am where love is.
I'm pretty tickled, too.
Afternoon at the River
The ice crumbled and called for us three boys to come.
The trees begged for light and water and warmth; their branches were frozen solid.
We saw a brown streak in the air. The eagles were swooping and chasing each other. One, only a youngster; the other fully grown.
A rickety tree leaned over the river to allow three boys to cross.
On the other side, we chopped off ragged chunks of ice with our heels, and knocked them into the water.
We threw the cold, clear chunks at slush rafts floating by. The delicate slush, if not hit by the hurled ice chunks, would surely break apart in the wild river rapids.
The snow crunched under our boots; our breath was smoke.
Ice was hacked for the rocks beneath.
Then, after minutes, it seemed, the shadows began to lengthen and the snow turned from a crystalline white to and ocean blue.
It was time to go.
The flowing river, naked trees and crumbling ice called out in unison,
"Good-Bye!"
Then, we chased a turkey.*
written by:
~Robert Lewis Stevenson (aka, the ten-year-old boy)
~Alfred, Lord Tennyson (aka, the eight-year-old boy)
~William Makepeace Thackeray (aka, the six-year-old boy)
~the dictation secretary (aka, Mama)
*The reader should know that it was highly and hotly debated between the three authors whether or not to include this last line in the final draft. An agreement was never reached.
He hung up his wings for the winter, and grabbed his saddle.
And, my, he sits it well.
He and Reed, they're quite a team.
Mmm, a good man on a good horse. (Be still, my heart!)
Not sure it gets much better than that.
Unless...
Unless there happens to be a little man wearing Wranglers and muddy boots climbing a fence nearby.
Yes, very muddy boots.
He's pushing a close second.
Is it okay for a woman's heart to be wrapped up with more than one man at the same time?
I need to know.
Soon would be good.
Following is a bit of a view into the home of a busy Mama who has an important letter to write one afternoon. The thing is, she's go three little boys...
This was not my June Cleaver day.
It was more of a Miss Hannigan, only with boys, kind of day. You know Miss Hannigan, the wild-haired snag of a woman on the movie Annie, who is driven batty by an infestation of little girls in her orphanage, the last of her good sense dribbling out with every liquor-laden note as she warbles out the song, Little Girls. Yeah, her. Well, this was a Miss Hannigan kind of day - minus the booze. The forces of our three little boys were against me, and one skittish look around the house told me that everything that could be shaken, had been shaken.
There weren't just crumbs underneath the dining room table, there was a grocery store under there, provided effortlessly by The Three. The sugar ants had voted hands-down for the Frito crumbs, and were mounting their forces to haul them off to the Frito Crumb Festival behind the baseboard trim. Well, let them fest. Fester. Feast. Whatever. I couldn't deal with it right now. I had to write a letter, The Letter. You know, the "have to write it today even if my house has exploded and my offspring have to gnaw on dry shredded wheat for dinner," sort of letter. I swept the crumbs from my mind and left them on the floor.
Passing the bedroom, I barely escaped a mocking glare from the precarious Everest of laundry that sat loitering on the bed. Loitering. Since Tuesday. A week ago Tuesday. But, I couldn't stop to fold it and put it away, not right now. Had to write The Letter. I walked on, needled by a vision of The Three as grown men: There they sat, their chins resting heavily in their hands, and with orphaned looks on their faces, they said in pinched voices, "Back when we were boys...the only things ever in our drawers were lint and echoes. Never were any clothes."
Bah!
Nearing the school room and my desk, I passed the bathroom of The Three. An acrid odor reached out and buckled my nose hairs. I was afraid to look. But, with a deep breath held and my scrapes of bravery pulled to attention, I risked a peek. The rancid evidence jeered at me from its puddle on the floor. No! Somebody couldn't aim for the third time today! Please, just tell me how it is that a little boy can pee on a bug, dead aim at three feet out, but he can't hit a toilet bowl twelve inches across that's right in front of him! I mean, really! You can talk about gravitational pull and massive flushing force all you want, but this toilet bowl will not just slurp out of midair anything that's squirted in it's general direction!
Lysol and I skidded around the floor together while I croaked out the song, Little Boys.
On toward my desk, I carefully picked my way across the school room floor, which had become a minefield pocked with toys. Carefully, I say, because stepping on a Lego contraption is almost as painful as having your foot blown off. Almost.
But, that's not all that was on the floor. No, the floor had become a massive confusion of tiny bits of paper that had been carefully cut, cut, cut (brows furrowed), cut, cut, cut (eyes riveted), cut, cut, cut (concentrating), cut, cut, cut (almost drooling), cut, cut, cut (shuddering sigh), cut, cut, cut (could sit there for hours), cut, cut, cut by the youngest of The Three. Confetti, if you will. Everywhere.
I ignored the feeling of paper bits crusting my feet as I plunked myself down at my desk. Deep breath in, deep breath out. I rested my fingers on the keys, and stared at the blank page on the computer screen. And now, for The Letter.
Or so I thought.
You see, The Three had followed me into the room, and had started doing that hovering thing. You know the hovering thing. They climbed on my chair, leaned on my desk, wanted on my lap. They were needing me, wanting me, clinging to me as if I were their mother. Oh. I was their mother. Right. But, right now, gathering my thoughts was like herding cats, and I just couldn't do hovering. Not when I had to write The Letter. The fibers of my patience and good resolve were fraying out rapidly, so, I scraped together my jagged shred of sanity and my crumpled last nerve, and resorted to what any desperate mother would.
The vacuum.
Now, scratch the shaft of heavenly light and the high angelic voices, this is not where June Cleaver comes in. I'm still very much Miss Hannigan. Back into the school room I marched with the hand-held vacuum, and thrust it toward The Three, muttering in a huffy staccato voice something to the effect of, "You made the mess, you clean it up!"
Now, usually, a directive of "clean it up" is met with three sets of slumped shoulders. Not today. Today, the directive was met with awe-struck faces, and three sets of perky eyebrows, for this thing I was handing to them had a motor! And it sucked! Their thoughts ran across their faces, "Oh, baby! Come to Papa!"
The Three dropped to their knees, attacking the doomed confetti with the gobbling vacuum. They were completely and totally enraptured. One enlightened soul made the discovery that if he held a piece of paper just so over the end of the hose, it sounded just like a... well, let's just say that it sounded exactly like something that sends boys into fits of side-splitting laughter. Over, and over, and over! After the laughter died down, they tried hanging the sucking hose from their cheeks. (No, not those cheeks). Cute, guys, an elephant of sorts. Just don't leave the hose there too long.
They didn't listen. Hickey cheeks. Nice.
Next, they realized that they could take the hose out of the sucking end of the vacuum, and stick it into the blowing end. Life had just gotten even better! How about blowing confetti instead of sucking it? How about blowing their mouths bigger than grapefruit? How about blowing their hair up? Really! Powerfully blowing air can create a fantastic finger-in-the-light-socket effect in mere seconds! Wiry-haired boys come out with the best up-do. There was simply no end to the entertainment value of air!
And, me? I was sitting contentedly at my computer (cue the light jazz in the background), taking full advantage of this wonderful space of uninterrupted time, courtesy of a vacuum-induced diversion, while sporting my new Miss Hannigan hair-do. Uh-huh. My hair had been blown-up, too. But, you know, it was actually relaxing, having my hair blown-up; nobody talking to me, nobody asking me questions, just the wind in my hair as I strung words together. My train of thought stayed firmly on its tracks, and all character resemblance to Miss Hannigan quietly slipped away as my fingers happily slapped out The Letter.
It was a good hour plus of time that I got to myself that afternoon, all because of a small household appliance. Now, who would have thought? A vacuum! The kind that sucks in one end, and blows out the other, just like a boy.
Everybody should have at least one.
It was a cold, early spring day in Alaska, and from the warm restaurant where I sat, I could look out the large windows and see the rocky beach bend around the point in both directions. Occasionally, my gaze would wander back inside and across the table to my husband - the man whom I'd been married to for eight years, the man who was the father to our two little boys back home, the man who was father to the little life that was making all those squirming, fluttering feelings in my womb now. I reached across the table for his hand, and he took mine. We smiled, holding each other's gaze a moment before we turned once again to the ocean view outside.
It was then that we saw them: three boys, stair-stepped in age from about nine to thirteen, hiking, throwing rocks, wrestling, wielding sticks, bumping, shoving, roughing; their bright eyes showing that they were, in fact, very near heaven right now. Silently, our heads turned as our eyes slowly followed their playful movement all the way around the point.
A band of brothers.
In the space of just a few moments, those boys had sent my knees weak and my heart to fluttering. I was utterly and completely captured. Reaching across the table, I took my husband's hand once again and said, "Oh, wouldn't it be fun to have three boys?"
Indeed! A few months later, in -20 degree temperatures, we drove home from the hospital - with our third boy!
Did you know? Boys are loud. VERY loud. They're rough and can be very, very messy. They tell it like it is. (You'll know when you have bad breath. And when you've started growing your own mustache. Yes, Mama, you.) They love sweets and are positive that generous servings of dessert should be consumed after every meal, preferably with a tall glass of milk. And, my, they can't wait until they become bachelors so they can swig their milk straight from the jug!
Think for a moment, just what they can do to a bathroom. Three boys, one bathroom. I've been known to choose the word 'crusty' to describe it for good reason. Taking showers is a huge waste of their time - even once a week would be far too often. And after brushing, their teeth may or may not be clean (probably not).
I get concerned, at times, when I wash load after load of laundry, and find only one or two pair of boy underwear to fold. Wha? Huh? Why? Actually, I don't think I want to know.
They'll declare that their room is clean, and upon inspection, you find a clear spot of floor in the very middle of the room, the rest? Meh. If you ever had the chance to look in their junk drawers, you'd see string, pocket knives, drawings, broken things, batteries, rubber bands, candy wrappers, broken things, business cards, feathers, rocks, pocket notebooks, broken things, army men, rubber balls, treasure chests, gold medals, and broken things.
They drink coffee in their milk. Sometimes. Those are really good times; their mustaches grow a little.
At bedtime, they plead with you to snuggle with them in their beds, then, there in the dark, they talk your ear right off. In the morning, they make their beds in the most delightful sort of way. The rest of the time, they scrap, fight, argue; they defend, protect, and nurture. They thump on each other; they hug on each other, these three boys.
{Photo taken last fall}
They're a band of brothers, they are.
* * *
This reminds me of something I wrote when they were six, four, and two. Tomorrow, I'll share. It's all about one desperate Mama, one vacuum cleaner, and three little boys.
Have a wonderful Monday, friends!
One winter's night: popcorn, hot cocoa, a ten-year-old boy (with his comic book), and his Mama.
He looked at funnies; I looked at him.
