Joys of Motherhood

Neil's learning to walk. Hooray! He's also learning to speak. He says "Ap-py" for apple, "ginga" for ginger, "dipper" for diaper and any red car is "mama car." After mama and dada, the one word he loves to use endlessly is "trash." Anything yucky goes into the trash. He says it with so much stress and intonation that he would have one believe it is the most important word in the world. The exchanges we have without words are the ones that are the closest to my heart. His unsaid need to be held, the lost and sad look that silently begs for attention when he's hurt, the rush of excitement when he has learnt something new always stack themselves one on top of the other. This happens in such astonishing frequency that at times I am scrambling to make a note of it somewhere; sometimes on a post-it, sometimes in a book, and when I can find nothing, I leave it to memory. Time and tide wait for none, I've never wanted it to wait because I've wanted to take life head-on. These days, however, I've started hoping somewhere that the time traveler's tale manifests itself from fiction into fact. You see, I want to relive each of these days over and over again.