I Rather Love This Lot

This boy of ours isn’t exactly small, but, apparently he is . . . small enough. Small enough to fit nearly his entire body into our guinea pig cage. Jesse alerted me to Anders’ contortionist like shenanigans. As disturbed as I was by the sight, I imagine my alarm was no worse than Jumpy’s – whose only possible sanctuary (a green, plastic, igloo-shaped home) had been thrown out by the incoming giant.

I love every single thing about this sturdy and compact little child. I sometimes think a 20-year pregnancy wouldn’t be too much to ask for a reward like him. I suppose that is a strange thing to think, but, there aren’t really any logical and normal ways to think at all about how very much I love and adore that boy. Logic and “reasonable” can’t really contain it.

And speaking of little folks who make me want to pass out because it is sometimes altogether too much to love people so . . . big . . ly (bigly? Yes. Bigly. I realize that is not a word. Perhaps I might have tried something like “tremendously”?). Anyway, speaking of:

It snowed approximately three-hundred feet here yesterday. I’m only estimating, of course, but I think it was about that. Yes, 300 feet. Maybe 400. You can imagine what shoveling must have been like (once we’d tunneled out of our house), so I was rather pleased to have it all taken care of by Abe.

Really, it did snow non-stop the entire day. It was awfully nice to have nowhere we had to be. Around noon Abe and Daisy went out and shoveled together (with a little help from Penny). Abe went out and did it all over again at about 5:00 pm. Then this morning he spent THREE hours shoveling. THREE HOURS!

Now, before you all start calling me a terrible slave-driving mother, I ought to let you know that I only actually asked for shovelers the first time (when Penny and Daisy lent their hands). Abe shoveled the other two times all of his own accord. In fact, I called out to him multiple times to come in and call it good, but he pressed on – spending the bulk of this morning’s shoveling clearing the enormous pile left across the bottom of the driveway by the snowplow.  Bless his heart. I bought him a candy-bar later to thank him. That’s something I suppose . . . for hours of freezingly miserable labor.

It seems for all my life I have been trying to figure how to keep little ones occupied and content while I either mow or shovel. I can’t get over how lovely it is to have that burden no longer solely my own.

Wait. I need to add here that I do have a very able and hard working husband – one who is more than happy to shovel or mow when he is here. But because he is so very often not here – when shoveling or mowing really need doing, it has loomed over me these many home-owning years.

There. Enough of that. Only . . . I can’t help but notice that I just talked about loving my kids to practically bursting and all of that . . . but only pictured five of the six. Oh dear. I assure you I am just as tied up inside and in love at the thought of Jesse (pictured here with cousin Miles and aunt Shannon). But he had no interest in going out in the snow today. “It’s too cold,” he told me, and went back to setting up a small toy catapult.

All the time I wonder about him – about who this little boy of mine will be when he is all grown up and has been able to follow his own pursuits with out mom telling him he can no longer scour the garage for tools, or dad telling him that taking that item apart will break it for good. It is literally almost giving me physical pain trying to keep pulling words out of myself to somehow express all of this. It really is too much. I better stop. I know you all understand what I mean and how impossible it is to say anyway.

Only . . . Jesse. Jesse with his scrappy little skin-and-bones body, Jesse telling me, “Mom, I don’t only love you a little bit!”, Jesse begging to take Mike’s new haircutting kit to bed.

Nothing must ever ever happen to this boy of mine. It simply could not be borne. Having all these little tiny moments that are so my Jesse with out being able to see the end? Too too horrible. I love him.

I love them all.

Those little stinkers.

Sigh.

The End.