I remember wrapping paper tubes. I do, I remember them as swords and telescopes…but now they look a lot like trash, one more thing to throw away. When did that happen? When did it become “just another laundry situation” when it used to be a fort? When did ring pops lose their reign as the penultimate mouth experience. At what moment does a nap go from punishment to luxury.

   Some people call them children, but for me they are a pair of rose colored glasses. They showed up just when I had become jaded to the sunrise. What an incredible bit of design….You are born fascinated and just at the moment when you have worked the blandness into everything some kid shows up and the wonderment of glowing stars and the glory of stickers begins anew.

I caught my children playing in the rain the other day, cupping it in their hands spinning in the yard, mouths open drinking straight from the sky. I almost yelled at them to get in the car, ” you are getting wet” but I stopped myself. At what moment will they turn into me? At what moment will that rain become a wet making, mess making, mud making, fever inducing burden?

I keep trying to isolate those moments with reason.  I can not remember the last time I ran up to someone, jumped in their lap and begged them to tickle me…but my kids do that shamelessly all the time. When will the lullabye that they beg for, turn into just some old lady singing off key at the foot of the bed? When will they care that their pants are on backwards? who jinxed who, what color their damn lolly pop is. Seriously, I have not cried over the color of my lollypop in years….why not?…(I’m gonna start doing that just to see what it feels like)  Will they just wake up too old for shenanigans, will they taper off?  I don’t know how any of it has happened, I was too exhausted to take note of the day we ditched the binky and the diapers and the need to travel with a toy truck.

I can not draw a conclusion. I can not pinpoint a single moment when the magic disappears, I can only hope that I don’t make any of it happen faster than it should.

The above sketch is titled “1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10” It is about how absolutely depressed my child looks when I look out the window before I realize he is playing hide and seek.