This evening we played baseball in the back yard. I threw the ball and he would swing. He actually hit the ball once, really well, after I told him to pretend the ball was a bug he wanted to squash. It went sailing, almost to the fence. After that colossal hit, he was so excited he would try to swing before I had even thrown the ball. I would see him start to swing as I drew my arm back, so I'd stop and remind him to wait for the pitch. This would send him into fits of laughter. The tease of a pitch. Over and over again. He didn't hit the ball anymore after that, but the belly laughs were better than hits.
Tiring of batting, he started spinning in a slow wide circle, like he was looking for another toy to descend upon, another place to crash. His nearly-three-year-old, nearing-bedtime brain had been on overdrive since dinner. Finally, with the grace only a toddler can possess, he lay down in a patch of clover. His giant yellow plastic baseball bat landed near his head angling toward the over-sized hard plastic ball close to his feet making a sort of crescent framing his body reclining there on the ground.
I stood there admiring how still he was, gazing up at the clouds with his toys, haphazardly artisic and real. I wanted to take a photograph, but my camera was inside, and my phone doesn't take pictures. I briefly considered running in to grab my Nikon, but a nearly-three-year-old doesn't stay grounded for long. And there was no way to recreate this. And I didn't want to miss this. So I just watched and admired how tender and boyish he looked and decided I would simply try to commit this image to memory.
"Come lay with me, Mommy, " he broke my trance.
I lay in the clover with my son. Looking at the clouds is hard to do without sunglasses, but we made out a dog, a dinosaur, and a horse. We watched a bee, buzzing from clovertop to clovertop. He collected a fistful of the white blossoms and breathed them in. He offered them to me to smell.
I realized I have never smelled a clover flower before. Sweet and beautiful.
Oh Kate, this is wonderful! There were many moments such as this that I enjoyed with my children. There were also many moments I missed--too busy, too tired, too irritated. You get the picture. I'm so glad you are capturing these moments on paper and in memory. When you're old and sitting in your recliner (like me), those memories will nourish your soul. Hugs to you and yours. Alva Lee
ReplyDeleteThank you, Alva Lee. I appreciate the encouragement to do more like this- so many times I feel like I have to have my camera to capture the memory. But sometimes just writing it down makes the memory even more solid! :)
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