Like AF

Well, I should make an appearance at least once a month, shouldn't I? I am transitioning away from much online stuff. That's okay, but I miss it. Mostly, I think about yarn and dirt. Knitting and gardening. And sticky fingers.

He talks to me now. In little half sentences that only someone trained in the art of code-breaking could possibly decipher. He remembers things from a week or a month ago and brings them up, totally out of context. I feel like superwoman when I figure our what the hell he is talking about.

He loves me passionately. He wants to be independent and he wants me to do everything for him. He has figured out how to make his body as stiff as a rod or as limp as a noodle, depending on the variety of tantrum he is aiming for. The tantrums are rare; his temperament is mild. He loves his father and wants to fix things with him.

He loves trucks and playing the harmonica.

When he helps me push the shopping cart, he has started hanging off of it like a monkey bar and whizzing along with his feet a few inches off the ground. His laugh is the most perfect sound in the world.

His hair is as blond as his parents' when they were children. He looks exactly like me and exactly like his father. The eyes are bluer than endless prairie sky. His kisses are wet and many.

He likes to go visit Brother. It is an incentive to get him in the car. "Get in and we'll go visit Brother." On Mother's Day we flew kites, got to watch a train lumber by and saw a crop duster fly by. I imagine that is the reason why.

When his friends come to play, he runs around in a circle and screams with joy, like a dog chasing his tail. He doesn't know what to do with all that love and excitement. He wants his friends to come to his house so he can host them, but then he is almost more content to sit and watch them play. His personality is so like mine and so like his father's.

I have decided that I no longer scream at him in anger. It was as easy as that. I have to resist all natural urges to scream when he isn't listening; that was how I was raised, after all. I just tell myself that I am zen, I am patience personified. Life moves more slowly and more quietly now. It's good. I am done with screaming. Our house has been quiet for two weeks. I have no fears of returning to that habit. I quit while the quitting was easy.

I am so full of my little boy these days that I don't know how C. fits anymore. It all still hurts, but I have to consciously turn my thoughts to him. I worry that I don't mourn him as a person, but more as a loss of my idealism, my youth, my dreams. He flits around the edges like a ghostly idea, never firming up and taking shape. He was a hope unfulfilled. What's a person to do with that? So intangible.

I continue to deeply desire another child. My husband does not. I pray that some satisfactory resolution will present itself to us in a way that respects both of our needs.

And that's June.