Near Perfection

Yesterday afternoon, I look #6 out for a walk, just the 3 year old and me.  This house gets busy and loud, and he doesn’t get as much one-on-one time as either one of us would like, so we took the opportunity of the baby napping and the big kids watching a movie which was too scary for him, and we slipped outside.

The sunlight reached out in the warm gold of late Fall as it cascaded through the few leaves still clinging to the trees by the creek.  As I walked on the path, he trudged through the mounds of fallen leaves on the sides.Every few steps, he would kick leaves up into the air and try to run through them before they hit the ground.

We stopped to watch ants crawling over a rotting log and searched for signs of life in the slow-moving creek.  He whispered excitedly when we saw butterflies kissing the last of the Fall flowers and then dancing off together on a softly rustling breeze.  His little voice sang softly and then a bit louder as he skipped off in front of me, then he laughed as I walked to catch up with him.  I thought to myself how grown and self-assured he is becoming.  I see less and less of a baby in him, and I was a little saddened by the swift passage of time.

After a while, he slipped his small hand into mine and started to walk beside me.  We stopped often to look at tracks left in the muddy creek bank and watch geese and ducks fly overhead.  We rested on a log which lay beside our path and witnessed the lazy circles of a hunting hawk, and my little guy began to lean against me and to yawn.

As we stood again to begin the walk home, he held up his arms to me, and my growing-up boy said, “Please carry me?”

“Carry you?” I asked him.  “You’re too big to carry.  Why should I carry you?”

He looked at me with those big brown eyes ans said “Because I’m not big,  I’m little … and you’re my mom.”