Today I took the kids to exchange a few duplicate birthday gifts. It was their first foray into a toy store. Deprived, I know, but I try to keep episodes of sobbing materialism to a minimum.
The agreement was that they could each pick out one replacement toy. I was using my mind-meld techniques to steer them towards a new doll stroller (Maggie's broke) and a set of pots and pans for their new stove.
Instead Oliver fell hard for the first thing his eyes landed on: a nifty Tinkerbell cylinder bag with a beaded handle. He calls it "my purse" and saying he likes it is to do a grave injustice to the intensity of infatuation everywhere. He is sleeping with it at this very moment.
My only regret was my reaction. Once I realized he meant business, I gently urged him to check out the trucks, which, duh, could never match the splendor of a lavender tin Tinkerbell purse. I mean, in a million years. Please.
A thing I like
I just started The Slippery Year: A Meditation on Happily Ever After by Melanie Gideon, which, from what I can tell so far, is a memoir about my current stage of life—the what-next stage when you have the relationship and the house and the kids and maybe even the job and then, well, having it all can be a little static. It turns out that life is like good fiction: the main character has to want something to make it compelling.
Anyway, I liked this little passage here:
"There's this strange phenomenon. An hour after you've put your children to sleep, the ways in which you have wronged them sprawl out on your chest, all two hundred and fifty pounds of them, and suck the breath right out of you. It works the same way with gratitude. An hour after your family has left the house, you love them with a piercing intensity that was nowhere to be found when you were scraping egg yolk off their breakfast dishes. Your hope is to one day feel this way about them when they are in the room. This is a pretty lofty goal."
Posts
3 comments:
Love that quote from the slippery year--you'll have to pass that on at the beach. that is me to a tee! the guilt, the aching love, everything. btw, I have photos of tyler in the purple fairy costume that I think I sent off to your kids for dress up--I'll be pulling that one out for HS graduation party. you might try pairing the fairy costume with the purse...hmmm, sounds like a match!
-KT
Somewhere between 3 and 6 my son went from wanting a sparkly purse and loving pink and purple more than anything to being obsessed with swords and shooting and one day declaring "I will marry a princess. She will be beautiful and have a fan," and taking a piece of paper and fanning himself in demonstration of the behavior he expects of his future wife. I have one question: how does he know what a fan is?
i love that quote too. i don't know if i have ever heard that feeling expressed so well.
and i am pretty sure that oliver and i now have the same purse.
Post a Comment