What a Boy teaches his Mother

"I made my bed.  Can I go now?"

I hardly nod yes before the screen door slams and out the window I see you ride away, a blur of legs pumping a red bike.  Its summer and you are seven years old.

Hours later I peek into your room to assess the job you've done.

A quilt tossed lumpily over the mattress suggests armies of legomen and other assorted treasures underneath.  I clear them out and spread coverlet smooth and wonder - "who can sleep like this?"

Moving on to the pile of dirt encrusted jeans neatly piled in the corner.  I lift each pair warily, as someone who has learned from experience, cautiously reaching my hands into pockets and pulling out rocks, marbles, army men, a magnifying glass all crammed together.  I wonder - "who can walk like this?"

Next to the dresser where boxes of every shape and size sit, stacked in teetering towers.  Every box is a treasure chest and I know without asking that you have the inhabitants memorized and filed away in that boy-brain of yours.  I marvel - "who can organize like this?"

Lastly, I pick up the encyclopedia off the floor where it has slipped from drowsy boy fingers at the end of a long day, its well worn pages marked with the dirty paw-prints of a boy who never stops.  I sigh - "who can learn like this?"

Later that night, after another pair of packed, grimy jeans has been tossed in the corner and a wild boy has been sent reluctantly to the tub, a smooth, clean little man in jammies comes in to kiss me goodnight.  I look at his funny face, his big ears and gangly legs, those missing front teeth and think "who loves like this?"


I've known you since the day I first saw you kicking and sucking your thumb on the ultrasound machine.  I've known your tears, your laughs and your smiles, yet some days it seems I don't know you at all.

You're all boy and I'm all girl.

Yet somehow it works.