Sugar and spice

Polly heads down the sidewalk with a little one on either side, their hands slipped confidently into hers. Shoulders a little rounded: all the reading, the computer games, the growth spurt. Old plaid skirt an inch or two above the knee now, about the length she’d wear it if she went to Catholic school. Yesterday a stranger asked her if she liked being homeschooled and she lit up, answered Oh yes with shining eyes. He works with students her age, this man does, and I could see him comparing—favorably; it was lovely, the way she grinned at her daddy’s jokes and nodded so vigorously when I talked about how much fun we have. Mary did some mild eye-rolling; she finds plenty to complain about, but I know that would be the case if she went to school too. Some temperaments have to wrestle and push, I think. It took me a long time to understand that what she needs is for me to be an angel for her to wrestle with. I wish I were better at it. She is so very strong.

Polly would rather lose an arm than wrestle with me. What she wants is not a sturdy angel but a song of praise, a warm glance, a shared joke.

When she brought the little ones back from their walk this evening, Jack had lost his band-aid. She put him on the counter and hunted for a new one. He took a pinch of air from her cheek and pretended to eat her. That laugh rippled out, and she threw her arms around him and said, “I just love you!” He grinned and bobbed and took another bite.

“Sometimes he just melts me, Mom,” she said.

Oh honey, don’t I know the feeling.

I know I can’t be the only one who does this

I’m lying down with the toddler, wishing he’d hurry up and go to sleep because there are fifteen things I need to be doing while he takes this nap. And then just as soon as he conks out and I’m free to sneak out of the room, I can’t make myself move. Because he is so beautiful this way: the heavy, rhythmic breathing, the smooth curve of his cheek, the way he flings his arms up onto the pillow and sprawls there, unconscious, a little sweaty, peaceful. I can’t leave him. The precious minutes of his nap are slipping away. I’ll regret it later, when I’m trying to get work done with him underfoot.

But I tell myself: you’ll regret it later if you DO leave. When I’m seventy I won’t remember the floors I didn’t wash. I’ll remember the smell of his head and wish I could nestle close and inhale it just one more time.

Green is the scariest part

It was my fault for letting her take a nap in the late afternoon.

The five-year-old, Jill. I heard her steps on the stairs, pad pad pad, after 10 p.m. when the house was hushed for the first time all day. Everyone was asleep, or so I thought, and I was just cozying up to my bestest friend, Bloglines, when I heard the padding feet.

“I’m scared,” she said. “Mary saw green eyes shining in the dark. For real.”

“She did? Just now?”

“No. Once.”

Ah, I see. This is about being the only one awake in a dark room. Your big sisters can’t protect you when they’re asleep. Especially from the green eyes, which everyone knows are devious. They’ll never stop watching you, because that’s what they do.

I took her back upstairs and lay down beside her on the skinny little bed.

“Mama,” she whispered, “you’re my best mother.”

Um, thank you, child to whom I gave birth.

“Mama. I can blow a bubble.”

Because you are fabulously talented.

“Mama. Alligators swallow their food whole, WITHOUT CHEWING.”

In that case I shall not invite them to dinner, ever.

“Mama, when I am old I will always remember this.”

Oh! Oh, sweetie, will you? Really? Or will it fade, will you move away from this moment with the obliviousness of mortality that is right and proper for your tender age; will there be nothing left of our lying here but a shred of sense memory, a vague and faintly puzzling sense of comfort in your future years whenever you hear the word alligator, or see a deer’s eyes in the headlights of a car?