In the way of a three-year-old, every day has been a possibility of wonder. While others of us have been preoccupied with questions of future employment and a healthy baby and finances and what in Heaven's name we'll be eating for dinner when the cook feels like she's been peeled off the bottom of a shoe--- sweet Alice has been thinking about play, amassing more treasures for her treasure box (already full-to-the-brim), how many hats she can jam on her head, the sandbox, and new ways to convince her mother that ice cream is an important food group.
I don't ever want to romanticize my life here in this space - there's plenty of that out there on the internets without me joining in, but it's hard not to dip the Alice stories in dreamy gauze.
The other day I was feeling so sick, and so tired--- which of course helped me to take the small step into Complete Self Loathing quite easily. As I lay hopeless on the sofa, a thought struck me that not only was I a horrible housekeeper, a useless wife, and a terrible friend - I had FAILED in my motherly duty of Historian and hadn't taken any pictures of Alice all summer. I tried to think of any single event or funny thing I'd caught on film and my mind went blank.
Imagine my surprise when I checked the camera last night to find several snaps of Alice in Summer Glory.
Sometime in my mid-elementary school years, Winston was laid off. I remember it being early summer, or nearly so. And we had just started to remodel our house. Suddenly Dad was home all the time, and wearing his grubby clothes, carrying a hammer and spending his days building a second story on our house. It's strange what sticks in the memory, I think: how arbitrary our brain is when it chooses to keep one faded image over another. But the truth is, I don't remember being scared or worried or the least bit fazed over dad's unemployment. That summer, the summer of drill bits and two-by-fours - the sawdust in our hair and the smell of fresh-cut wood - was one of the best summers of my life.
I can't imagine that this summer will quite compare for Alice, in scope or depth - to that far-off clutch of months in my childhood, but I can hope that this was at least a sweet one for her.
3 comments:
I'm so behind on my reading, so first of all, CONGRATULATIONS!!! I am so happy and excited for you guys.
And I think that little kids remember the smallest moments the best: the time that someone took to teach them to play a game, or the first time they saw something they never saw before, or the time they got to have cookies as a special treat when they got to stay up late. Those types of things. Not the things that are bought with money, but with time.
Next summer, you will have a lettle babbeh!!!!!!! Named Polly! Or, you know, this is kinda funny. Anneke's name if she had been a boy was supposed to be Pollock Walden. You are totally free to use it. To go with Polly.
There IS a lot of romanticizing lives on the internets. It really drives me bozonko. I have more to say about this, but it's possible one of the ones I want to say this about reads this space too.
Lastly, I want you to make me that red/white gingham shirt. In LARGE. kthxbye.
Oh there is such a fine line between focusing on - and celebrating - the good moments of our day and digitally romanticizing our lives to the point of absurdity.
You always seem to write from a sweet spot: truthful and lovely and wise while still aware of all the dark spots and hard moments. 'Tis a gift. :-)
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