In Search of Dessert

There are times when you cannot help but feel sentimental. When you feel that you are the star of your own, perfect, movie. Or moment. As my friend Cecilia would say, when you feel infinite.

I am listening to Lyle Lovett very loud in my iphone while working on a photography project on the computer. My pajamas are a worn second skin. My knees are bent against the chair arms. My feet are tapping. And I am smiling to myself. These are my infinite moments: me, music and sentences forming in my head with ease. In a car, on a roadtrip, listening to the Indigo Girls as the Smoky Mountains come into sight, with thoughts of how much life there is left to live and how much of my Grandmother’s Sour Cream Cake I’ll be eating in a few hours. I may play the same song five times. Perfect sentences flow through my mind. I cannot write, so, in these moments, I send them out to the universe. My own form of prayer.

I started today the same as every other: a bottle, a book, a baby massage and then watching the Nugget try unsuccessfully to crawl. We went for a run in absolutely blissful 75 degree weather, with not a single cloud in the sky. At the end, like every Wednesday, I stopped at the thrift-store-of-wonders and cleaned them out of this week’s stock of little boy clothes and amazing books. I wrapped up the visit up by conversing with the elderly cashier in French, and then showing Liam off to the gaggle of her friends who crowded around us to coo at him.

I left smiling. I smiled at the sun, it’s constant presence a friend in whom I can trust these days more than many others.

I ate peanut butter and cookies for lunch. I laughed like a child when I told Jonathan. Giddy.

I put Liam down for his nap and cleaned the bathrooms, studied French, worked on Photography. When he awoke, we went to pick up Daddy. We walked along Congress Avenue, the pink stone of the Capitol building in the dusk light beaming warmth like a fresh loaf of bread. We strolled downtown, window-shopping, commenting on new boutiques and old buildings. We spontaneously decided on Tex-Mex for dinner on South Congress: Nachos and Fajitas. Margaritas and more cooing strangers.

At some point during dinner I looked at Liam’s leg, where I noticed what looked like a rash.  His eyes had looked wrong all day anyway – he looks sick. I attributed it to the vaccines that he received two days ago. He has a very normal, low fever but now a rash? I just read this morning that it is one of the early signs of the swine flu. My heart dropped as I traced my finger over the red bumps on his calf in the dim lights of the restaurant.

We weren’t sure it was a rash. The light was bad. Hard to say. I turned him around and he beamed a giant smile, even with his tired eyes. In that moment I realized, flu or no flu, life or god could take him away in an instant, and (assuming we do all in our power to keep him safe to the point that we can) we have no control over that. In that moment I pushed the worry off of my face and returned Liam the smile. A gift to him, for having given me one every moment, with every smile – a lesson in how to enjoy the now.

At home we took his temperature and checked his whole body. A low fever- the nurse says it is still normal – but the rash was just a scratch. I even know where he got it, now that I think of it. So now he’s off to bed, hopefully sleeping off the last of his vaccine induced crankiness. And I am working on photography, listening to very loud music and smiling to myself. I am concerned about the way he looked today We will monitor him closely. Sure, I will worry, but I made a decision today: I won’t let worry ever replace a moment of enjoying him. And if that is true for him, that goes for my husband, myself, and this moment, whatever the worry.