I cried at breakfast this morning. We're on the second to last chapter of The House At Pooh Corner . Have you read it? Do you know what the last chapter is called? I'm going to start crying again. Christopher Robin and Pooh Come to an Enchanted Place, and We Leave Them There. Yep, crying again.
I'm not generally overly sentimental. I don't even scrapbook, but this one got to me. I've really been noticing that whole fleeting nature of childhood lately. Kindergarten? Over. In like five minutes. Do you remember a school year when you were a kid? It was a lifetime, a world. I could not imagine a time or place before or after or apart from kindergarten or first grade or even seventh grade maybe.
My own kids' growth sneaks up on me. Suddenly Desmond is tall. And he lost his second tooth yesterday.
So, when the boys asked what the last chapter was called, and I cried and then had to explain why I was crying at breakfast, a semi-coherent (particularly for a six and three-year-old) stream of words began to spill out of my mouth...
You're so tall. And remember Rocket John? (His imaginary friend that used to zoom him off on worldly adventures. In case you don't know, Rocket John had 100 pet lemurs that slept in tiny sleeping bags in Desmond's room. They had a swimming pool in our front yard with a diving board and sometimes they would jump as high as the moon.) And I'm so excited about all the big dude adventures that you guys will have (without me, I add to myself and start crying anew), but I'm also sad about your little dude adventures ending.
I watch Desmond's sensitive face trying to grasp my uncharacteristic emotional spillage and, of course, there's Felix laughing. Between the intensely real imaginary world and the inappropriate emotional responses, it can be difficult to discern a three-year-old from a schizophrenic sociopath.
From the middle of it, without the hazy filter of nostalgia, it's hard to heed that omnipresent advice about cherishing every moment, yada, yada, yada.
So, let's look way back, through enough time and space that we can no longer feel the unrelenting clamp of teething gums on your finger and hear the crying and see the mess under the highchair. I made this for you almost five years ago. Time slips by so quickly. I should probably start a scrapbook.
Here's what one vegan toddler ate when he was one. If you click on the collage, you'll find some short notes.
