Our days are filled to the brim.
The kids have school in the mornings, and their afternoons are topped off with toys and television and time with mom. On Monday evenings Jack attends a gymnastics class, on Tuesday afternoons Kit goes to ballet wearing a pale pink leotard with matching tights and the tiniest pair of pink leather ballet slippers I’ve ever seen, and on Friday at four o’clock Kit and Jack participate in an art class at a really great art school in the Fountain Inn Civic Center. At first only Kit was registered for the art class, but when Jack went along to drop off his sister on her first day he refused to leave with me and Archie and soon found himself enrolled in the class, too.
When Kit and Jack are in art class Archie and I go next door to the public library and read our way, out loud, through a pile’s worth of children’s books. When the hour is up and my voice is almost gone Archie helps me carry our collection of titles to the book return chute beside the main desk on the first floor and together he and I slide each book into the open slot. Each time we let a book go Archie names it aloud, biding it a fond farewell. He forgets to whisper when he does so his voice is amplified by the book return chute’s metal casing and I’m certain all the titles are tossed up and down the library’s aisles as they trip of my son’s thick tongue. But no one ever looks at us, and no one ever shushes us, and usually someone smiles at us so we smile back and Archie hollers a hearty hello as he waves and then we’re on our way.
The past few weeks have been filled with colds, and ear infections, and coughs that wrack children’s chests until they choke up whatever they last consumed. Cheeks are chapped and sometimes noses bleed and I feel like a common criminal every time I try to swat at the snot on Archie’s red nose with a tissue. Cranky kids have short fuses that seem to burn away until they’re lying on their backs on the floor, kicking their feet against cupboard doors.
But cranky kids like cuddles, too, and if I’m able to slow down enough to remember as much afternoons with bad beginnings can turn into unanticipated naptimes spent piled together on our couch in front of a flickering television set. I’m not embarrassed to tell you that I believe that that kind of t.v. watching is immune to the criticism of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
I got a rowing machine for my birthday. It’s out in our garage, right next to a pull-up bar we hung from the ceiling. Brian, my trainer and friend, talked me into declaring these winter months an off-season from running. Instead of running I’m performing rowing workouts based on work to rest ratios, speed and tempo equations, and time to distance percentages every other morning, and then I’m meeting Brian at the gym later in the day for strength and conditioning workouts. Frankly I’m surprised to report that this time off from the road and track is not a bad thing. After all, I know I’ll run again this spring.
John is thriving on a lot of exciting changes at work, and he watched the kids all day Saturday as I napped the afternoon away upstairs. On Friday I went to the doctor who read my blood pressure and took my pulse, drew my blood and took x-rays before declaring that I have pneumonia, a secondary infection to a cold I’ve been unable to shake, and that rest and a bevy of medication would set me straight.
For Valentine’s Day John sent me flowers from his sister’s store. He sent the kids deliveries as well. The boys received toys off the shop’s sales floor, and Kit received a little flower arrangement she placed beside her bed. “I am setting her expectations high,” John told me in confidence.
The Friday before Valentine’s Day it snowed. The Saturday morning afterwards John and I took Archie, Kit and Jack outside to play. They wear fleecy footed pajamas to bed, the kind that zips up the front, so I put sweatpants over their pajamas, boots on their feet, hats on their heads, mittens on their hands, and coats on their backs before I pushed them out our garage door. John played with them as I took photos and told them stories about how it snowed all winter long when I was a child growing up in Pennsylvania. They may or may not have believed me.
This month Archie’s class is learning about the community. They took a field trip to the grocery store two weeks ago, and they’re going to a dentist’s office this week. Last week they went to tour a post office and while the class was there the students mailed Valentine’s they’d made to their parents. Mrs. Sharon, Archie’s teacher, sent home a note asking us to let her know what our son’s reaction was when his Valentine was delivered to our home. I included the photos I took documenting Archie’s enthusiastic response with a note I wrote over breakfast and later that day I received an e-mail from Archie’s speech therapist, Wendy. She wrote, “You really touched Sharon’s heart by sending back a note about the Valentine’s.” But the truth runs deeper than that because that Mrs. Sharon, she reaches me in a way I’ll never be able to return to her with the careful way she attends to my son.
This coming Friday Kit and Jack’s class will be celebrating the wedding of Q and U. Their teacher gave me a Save the Date card telling me as much last week. They’ll also be a reception immediately following the ceremony in the Parish Center. I was asked to dress Kit and Jack in their nicest outfits for school that day, no matter how fancy, and was encouraged to attend the ceremony and reception to take photos. I will, and I’ll share those photos here, and I’ll tell you, too, that I already know what my girl and boy are going to wear.
These days of ours, they are filled to the brim.
