Memoriez

Getting old has its perks, I suppose. Senior citizen discount is one but I don't like getting old. I don't like looking at the end of my life that is certainly closer than the beginning of my life. I'm not afraid of dying. It happens to all of us. What I hate is the memoriez that pop up unbidden and remind me of all that is past.

My favorite time of my life was when the boys were small. Too young, yet for school but no longer babies. The days stretched endlessly before them as they shared their childhood with me. There were days in the sun, days inside, days where we danced and sang and acted silly and days when we sat and created something that was our alone.

I loved the way they smelled after a day in the sun. They smelled of little boy sweat, sunshine and whatever was growing in the herb garden where they liked to sit. They would run and play until it grew too warm and then they would come inside for lunch and a rest before settling down with something in the cool of the house.

I miss that. I miss the curve of Casey's very brown cheek and the softness of his very blonde hair. I loved the lankiness of Josh's little boy body and the sound of his laughter. I loved the way they announced to the world that they were brolees, their word for brothers, and heaven help anyone who came between them.

I miss their giggles. Giggles so powerful that sometimes they couldn't run from me because of those giggles. I miss them powdering themselves and the whole living room with cornstarch in what they called "We Powder Weselves". I miss Casey's foot speaking to me and the notes he would slip under the bathroom door announcing that the ahn-du-nope man was delivering the mail. I miss little kid words frotmockl (motor cycle) Floptopker (helicopter) and Rah nah nee (Fire truck... listen to the sound of the siren rah na nee) I miss their cuirosity, the goofiness, their hunger to be read to, the silly dances, the belly juicees and all the rest that would make sane people look at us as if we had lost our mind.

When Josh was so very small and Casey hadn't made his appearance yet, we would find him sitting under a forsythia bush at the back of the yard. He called the bush his recipe and when I asked him why it was called his recipe, he told me quite simply because it was something he made. Such as a recipe. I miss that amazing ability of theirs to put a name to something that, while adults would scratch there head wondering what the heck, made perfect sense if you knew the boys.

When Casey was small and his speech garbled, he was tested by the county and the tester would pull me aside and tell me where he was failing. He had just turned three and the tester told me that Casey held his pen oddly, that he had 7 lines on the letter e when he printed it, and he didn't know the letter Q. When I asked they told me no one had then shown Casey how to hold the pen correctly, asked why there were so many e lines and how often does someone actually NEED a q anyway, I was told no to the first to and got a look for the third. I handed Casey the pen and told him to hold it the grown up way, the way he was "Supposed" to hold it. He did and wrote his name. (He had JUST turned 3) When I asked him about the E he told me that he put those extra lines in it because he liked the way it looked. And then after all of this, the tester tells me that he had scored as high as a 7 year old and would probably have scored higher but that was where the test cut off and she was bugging him about e lines and the way he held his pen? I miss people being amazed by my sons. I miss hugging that to me, of taking pride in what came so easily to them.

Now we are all grown, though I do think the sons are more grown up than I, and it makes me melancholy that I will never be able to hold those hot squirming bodies in my arms, or laugh so hard thatsoda squirted out of our noses which only made us laugh harder. I miss laughing with them.

I guess it's just an old poop sort of day for me. A day when all I have lost overwhelms me and threatens to knock me to my knees.

I know I can't have any of that back but I can wish, can't I?