Making Lemonade

A camera couldn’t have captured the image: a small person, huddled just inside the door of a dim bedroom under a red flannel sheet. Sound asleep.

“Mommy?” he says when he wakes. Then his face crumples as he remembers. “Mommy, it was too late.”

I know what this means: time to clean the boy up before preschool. I’ll change his sheets later.

Vaguely I wonder why he didn’t come get help in the night, rather than sleeping on the floor. It is only after the morning rush that I think back on that scene. He slept near the door, not beside his bed. The sheet was draped halfway across the room toward the bed. And then I understand.

He was coming — sheet clutched around his shoulders — to find a grownup. And was so tired, he lay down where he was and went back to sleep before he could open the door.

Migraine = No coherent post.

Believe me, I tried to write one. It didn’t even make sense to me.

Oh yeah. It’s November. Can’t go to sleep without a stop by this place.

Maybe it’s not such a good idea to blog daily while working two and a half jobs and mothering a four-year-old?

Nah.

The cut grass had been sitting there on the lawn long enough to dry, like a kind of hay. We were gathered between the stream and the enormous spruce which sometimes served as our secret hideout: my best friend, her sisters, and I. “Let’s make birds’ nests,” I said. I was the one who had to come up with a game we all could play. Otherwise my best friend wanted to play only with me, her little sister tried to join in, and their elder sister would go off and do her own thing.

So we scooped the hay into piles, or picked it up in handfuls. Shaped it into doughnut rings, with bottoms. Worked together to build large nests that could hold several of us. Abundant shade made the heat of the day bearable, and the sun seemed to sparkle on the running water as we spun in circles, tossing hay in the air just to watch it catch the light as it fell.

I built one nest on my own, shaped carefully to match the ones I had seen under the eaves of my grandparents’ house. I lined it with fresh grass to make it soft, and placed a leaf to look as if it might be sheltering an egg.

“Wow,” said the older sister. “You’ll have real birds fighting over that nest. They’ll want to use it.”

I don’t know if she meant it literally, or was simply trying to convey a compliment, but even then I knew better. It looked good, but there was nothing holding it together. If you tried to make it into something more, it would come apart as if it never had been.

Taken outside my front door this morning.

I slapped mosquitoes, one after another.

“I’m Buddhist,” you said. “I don’t believe in killing things. But at times like this I’m glad have someone around who doesn’t have that problem.”

I was embarrassed for years after the fact about the mad crush I’d had on you. These days, I consider you the first of my fabulous gay boyfriends.

A neighbour rang to say your dog was barking outside his house.

“My dog’s not barking,” you said.

“Well, yes it is!” he insisted. “It’s right here yapping. I can see it.”

You beckoned to your dog. Held her by the phone. Gave her a little squeeze until she let out a bark.

“Funny how she can be in two places,” you said.

These are last year’s. I was so busy sewing this year’s costume, I ran out of time to carve pumpkins with Acorn. Next year, I hope.

I chose to vote early specifically so that Acorn could go with me: I thought it would be a good chance to talk with him about how our government works. “We’re going to go vote for who we want to run our government,” I told him.

“Who will win?” he asked.

“We don’t know who will win, yet. We’ll find out after the votes are counted.”

He thought this over.

“We will vote, and I will win, because I am faster,” he said with an air of finality.

Maybe limiting the time you spend on emails will help.

Keeping your desk in order will doubtless help life run a bit more smoothly, as well.