The Driveway

We snuggle.

We argue.

He pushes the buttons,

I give him the boundaries.

In me he has a forever ally

and a tough-tender supporter

who takes no shit

and gives her all.

As he approaches three

I cannot help but sit back and scratch my head

at how it all came to be,

how a couple who vowed childlessness came to 

place a small boy at the center of their hearts,

how we've put our souls at his feet

like tiny kittens.

The other night we took out the trash and it was dark.

We stood in the driveway and he was scared,

but in his brave fashion he just took it all in,

despite the discomfort.

"The dark is beautiful and mysterious," he said.

Phonetically he said, "The Dawk is Beautifuw and Mysteeewious!"

He says a lot of things like that, big words and small cobbled-together

explanations for the parts of life I've long accepted as mundane.

Taking out the trash, walking the dark driveway.

Beautiful and mysterious.

Good God, he is amazing.

It's like he carries around a dose of wonder and just injects it into stale things

and suddenly my world is so technicolor.

 I often ponder the curving path life takes

later in the evening after he's gotten out of bed twenty times

to not really use the bathroom

or just simply ask me again if I have a penis

or will I hug Giraffe one more time…

I marvel at how in love and terrified I am

being the mother of a child who ventures out into the world more and more

and how much I have to learn from his fears

and his observations….

so I watch him ride his trike next to me,

turning the corners so carefully,

listening so beautifully to my prompts...

I casually stroll with my heart in my throat

thinking

how beautiful

and mysterious

this moment is

in its vastness

and depth -

how a little boy

and my night-sky love for him

make me feel so small

and so very brave

on the groundless field of life.

xoxo,

Sunny