Lunch language

unrelated picture but I love how they ended up posing just the same, down to the shape of their hands

Saturday morning.

We divide to conquer the day's list. Greg takes Sam with him to the barber (both need trims) and the dry cleaners, I take the girls to Costco for supplies for the trip and food for the party we're hosting when we get back from vacation. The humid air makes quick work of my hair and my clothes cling to me, damp and unflattering. We get the cart loads packed into the car, drive home, unload and put everything away. Surveying the room with our looming departure in mind, I move on to the laundry, replacing dry with wet and wet with dirty. And there's always more where that came from.

You know the drill.

In the middle of it all, Sam arrives home and, trailing me while I carry piles of laundry upstairs, asks his usual question "when are we having lunch? I'm hungry." I sigh, loudly. There's so much to do. And it feels like we just finished breakfast.

"Sam, you know where everything is. You can make it yourself, can't you?" (Once I heard someone ask "What, are your arms painted on?" and that's how I feel in this moment.)

"Um, okay." His voice trails off as he backs up down the stairs, trailing his hand down the banister. "I didn't know if we were getting it ourselves or if it would be more...together."

I watch him take his deflated self back down to the kitchen, trying to figure out what his deal is with lunch. Everyone else in the family is always content to grab something on days like this, happy to tailor the timing and content of lunch to their own preferences. No big deal. But not Sam. He's always trying to organize us into a midday meal.

Guilt-nudged, I follow him down and enlist his sandwich-making while I peel fruit. We sit down together and share communal chips and salsa. He chatters happily about Louie and contradictions and plans for middle school and the book he's reading. And thanks me three times for doing lunch.

And then it hits me.

I don't know why it's taken me so long to realize.

Lunch is his love language. Or one of them, anyway.

It's a revelation. Huh. Kids have a love language, too, not just venus-and-mars married couples. This bit of obviousness has completed evaded me before now.

Of course I knew he really likes lunch, but I suddenly understand that it's more than just a preference for my daily servitude. For him, it is connection. It is proof I care enough to stop and spend time with him. For me, lunch is simply nourishment and work. For him it is like a family sacrament, where simple bread and peanut butter transform miraculously into a dose of love.

Well. This I can do.

Now if I can just convince him that wiping up the table crumbs and putting dirty dishes in the dishwasher is my love language.

Singing the Baby Blues

The Blues

Much of what is said here

must be said twice...

Nobody will listen, it would seem,

if you simply admit

your baby left you early this morning

she didn't even stop to say good-bye.

But if you sing it again

with the help of the band...

people will not only listen;

they will shift to the sympathetic

edges of their chairs...

~Billy Collins

* * *

I was thumbing through a Billy Collins poetry book last night and that one spoke to me. Maybe because I've been a bit blue. Maybe because my baby done left me, too. (I said, my baby done left me, too. Do doo do do.) Or he will someday, anyway. He up and turned 11 today. The nerve!

Actually, it's with a lot of joy that we celebrate Sam today. We were sharing our favorite memories of Sam at breakfast today and G mentioned what a great head of hair Sam had as a baby: this shock of sandy hair standing straight up in the air like a gosling. He was a hit everywhere we went and the baby mascot for our ward and neighborhood.

He's always been a tender, strong, funny, smart sweetheart of a boy. I can't wait to see where his great heart and curious mind take him.

But.

It's with a pocket of melancholy that I greet each of Sam's milestones. I grin and clap and hug and bake and (secretly, in my heart) cry a little. The crucible of the youngest child, I suppose (along with the fact that there are very few photos of just him in those early years). I did it almost from the moment he came home from the hospital (Holly Hunter style, in full sob mode: this is the last time I'll bring a newborn home from the hospital...the last time I'll watch the stumbling first steps...the last time I send a child to kindergarten).

I know, I know. Get over it. Kids grow and discover and stretch the apron strings and launch their own lives. Parents support and applaud and nudge and work themselves out of a job (or else become like the creepy stalker mom in Love you Forever...sneaking in windows and climbing up ladders).

But I still reserve the right to get myself a microphone and a back-up band so I can belt out the blues on occasion.

* * *

In other blues news, my late summer blues/blahs are lifting, methinks.

And (coincidence?) we're heading off for a week in Maine (Acadia) for some forced togetherness dressed up all pretty in the guise of kayaking and walking and biking and playing games and eating.

Like weeds

What is it about summer that acts as MiracleGro for kids? All the extra rest and sunshine and (this year) rain?

It seems like Maddy's grown inches in the last month. She loves her new glasses and being able to see the notes on her music and the leaves on the trees. Is there anything more heartbreaking that hearing your child exclaim over and over again how wonderful it is to see finally? On the other hand, one of her middle school teachers wrote me a letter about what a great girl we have. So that evened out the eyesight neglect feelings I was having.

Lauren gave a talk in church today and did a great job--so grown up and poised. Every once in a while there are moments when I have to re-construct my mental image of my children and this was one of them. She introduced herself and said "I'm almost 16" and, while I was aware of this approaching milestone, I had to do a double take. What? My daughter? {Sunrise, sunset, etc.}

She went on the youth pioneer trek re-enactment last week and had a ball. Here she is with her friend from school who came along and a good friend from the stake (he is also the son of one of my good friends).

Sam is growing faster, even, than his sisters. His new spurt (recorded with a line and date on the door frame of course) required new shirt and pants for church. And suddenly I get a fast-forward view of the man he'll be, sooner than I would like to admit:

I can't stand it! Somebody push the pause button! No one ever told me how wonderful ten year old boys are. He's easy going, funny, and great to have around. The girls are leaving for camp this week and for a few days (I join the girls on Thursday after I teach my class in Boston) Sam will be an only child, subject to the full glare of his parents' attention.

Poor boy.

p.s. Sam always reminds me of a nice combination of my dad and G. Speaking of my dad, today's his birthday. Sure do love you, Dad.

Ministry of This and That

Sam gave me a firm summer assignment. Mom, please read Harry Potter 6 before we see the movie. He carefully gathered a stack of the series and lovingly left them beside my bed over a year ago but now he's serious and so, finally, am I. I've been devouring the series for the past month or so, in between some grown-up reads here and there.

I know I'm about 9 years late to the party but I've been having a blast, especially since I have such an enthusastic 10-year-old cheering section, his face examining mine with an expression very close to the one I wore when I took the girls to their first Boston Ballet performance (isn't this great? do you love it as much as I do? how about now? and now?).

All of the fantastic titles make me smile: Ministry of Magic. Improper Use of Magic Office. Department of Magical Transport. Muggle-Worthy Excuse Committee. They remind me of AA Milne and his Winnie the Pooh books with their Very Important Capitalized Terminology. And then I started thinking. What would my ministry be? Where would I be assigned?

Department of Excessive Procrastination?

Dust bunny patrol? (actually, I'd probably be arrested by them...)

Office of Realistic Optimists?

Committee of Joy and Enthusiasm Seekers?

Maybe simply this: Ministry of Happy Childhoods {for all}. Pretty much encapsulates every thing I'm doing right now, from mom to working with the teenage girls at church to school work and research. I think all of us parents would be there, toiling away as Childhood Engineers or some such.

What about you? Any ministries or departments you would envision for yourself?

And you're all invited to join Monty Python's Ministry of Funny Walks with me:

Now that would be a great job:

"I have a silly walk and I'd like a government grant to help me develop it"

Cinqo de Percy Jackson day

How can you resist a ten-year-old boy who, the first thing he says when he comes in breathlessly through the door after school is

"Can we go to the bookstore right now? Please Mom?  The 5th book is out today!"

You can't.  You really can't resist.

So, while we are definitely eating enchiladas and limeade, rolling our Rs, and hanging paper flowers (recycled from before) to celebrate Cinqo de Mayo...in the heart of one reader who is currently curled on the sofa flying through pages, this is cinqo de Percy Jackson day around here.