Feb
11
Just like you wanted
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It snowed last Thursday, and the flakes kept coming down all through the day on Friday. Then it changed to freezing rain, and by Saturday morning it was like everything had been dipped in a half-inch coating of glass. Branches drooped with the unfamiliar icy weight, and soon trees started breaking apart and coming down with the heart-sinking tinkling crash of a collapsing champagne tower. Big green flashes from blown transformers, canceled plans, cabin fever creeping in. This suuuuucks, I moaned, leaving an oily noseprint on the window. Stare, stare, paw at the door like a cooped-up dog, pick my way across the crusted-over snow and screw up my face with a big AW SHIT when my foot plunges into bone-cold wetness. Ugh.
Riley, from the backseat of our truck as we skidded carefully down the street on Saturday afternoon: “Well, soon enough this will all be gone and it’ll be back to how it always is, just like you wanted. And it won’t be different any more.”
He was right. I mean, it is back to how it always is, for the most part. Wet and February-ish, with extra sogginess from the leftover slush. Dirt and debris everywhere from all those fallen trees. Everyone back in school, no snowmen to build, that strange icy wonderland already fading in the rearview.
Feb
5
Six
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Dylan’s birthday celebration started last Friday as we drove to Sunriver and wrapped up last night with a happy plume of air blown over six candles. Six!
Last year when Dylan turned five I wrote down a list of some of his favorite things: whistlepigs, Daddy’s pancakes on weekend mornings, Curious George, cheese quesadillas, silly YouTube videos of cute animals, going to Cabelas. This year there are a few more things to add — playing Minecraft on the iPad, hiking in the woods at our friend Keith’s house, relentlessly begging for printouts of Google-Image-searched Gipsy Danger fan drawings so he can color them — but by and large, he hasn’t changed much at all in the last twelve months. He’s the same silly, happy, shy, weird, funny little guy.
You know how some years come with these nearly incomprehensibly giant leaps forward, children shrugging off their too-tight skins and running away giggling? And some are like the gift of an extra-long exposure, where you hope to burn the details into your mind. Light trails streaking all around, blur of movement, a sharp-focus smile. This is what he was like. I’m so glad for this amazing boy, yesterday and tomorrow and right now.
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