Renewed Focus

We played basketball this weekend, my oldest and I.  Liam was there for a bit, but then he puttered off to do something else in the garage, as did his father.  They are nothing if not true to their largely loner natures.  Craig was in and out of the game, desperate to have a huge heavy basketball wham him on the head, and we took turns guarding him as often as we guarded the opposing team.

The others quickly petered out, but Jack and I are social creatures and we stuck it out, happy for each others’ company and for the exercise.  We ran dribble drills, up and down the driveway.  We took turns shooting baskets, each standing to the side near the undeveloped lot, so as to keep the rebounding ball from rolling away into the trees and thorns on that side of the driveway.  (Unfortunately we are surrounded by down-slopes and thick underbrush, which makes basketball a challenge.  But we rise to the occasion. Jack and I are “yes and” kind of people, and seeing my positive, we-can-make-this-work nature twinned in him is like coming home.)  We played until the mosquitoes drove us inside.

He’s pretty good at making baskets, short though he is.  He has good aim, moves with confidence.  His calf muscles are strong, his arms.  He has broad shoulders, a triangle waist.  I look at his body and still, seven years later, marvel.  Look at this life, here because of me and his father.  Look, see.  What a strange thing, to have created for myself a basketball buddy.  Behold how blessed I am to play a Sunday afternoon game with this beautiful creature I made.

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Tonight, because Jack was at a baseball game with his father, and because the ToddlerMonster goes to bed somewhat early, I had just Liam for stories at bedtime.  He sat in my lap, drinking milk, a new (EXPENSIVE) pair of glasses (EXPENSIVE REPLACEMENT FOR THE EXPENSIVE LAST PAIR WHICH HE BROKE) perched on the end of his nose.  He is slim slim slim.  He used to be our stocky little man, short and solid – years ago we got the Fat Baby lecture on this one.  (Of all our children, it was him that got us in trouble for size!)  For the past year or so he’s been a reed – shot up tall, thin in the face, no butt.  His pants are always falling off because he has no butt.  This evening he folded up all those stringy long limbs in my embrace, like a lap full of clothes hangers, and we curled around each other.  We usually just do one or two but tonight I read him four stories.  We got to the end of one and I just kept picking up another one, another one, another one. Making it last.