Today the wide-eyed one who loves to wonder told me with with brazen confidence:
See that tree mama? What I’m gonna do is climb it to the top and jump out after I make some wings. I’m going to glide down (a brother interjected, “won’t you FALL?”) Oh no, I won’t fall I will GLIDE. It’s going to be great!
I smiled at the blue-eyed one. Much of life seems to bear down hard on this precious son. The way he feels and learns and sees and hears makes for
o-v-e-r-w-h-e-l-m-e-d him more often than I wish. Who am I to crush his dreams? Who am I to be the voice of reason and tell him he can’t and it won’t work and here are 10 reasons why that is a terrible idea?
How many times have I crushed him already? Not been tender enough when he was (slightly) injured for the millionth time and I could not muster one more ounce of compassion? This the one child that managed to break his foot simply leaning back on a kitchen chair because he could not sit still through dinner. How have I taken the fun out of something meant to be lighthearted when all he wanted was to dream big?
He’s hard at work behind me right now. The sweet grunts and groans of boy deep in his work. Believing big that he can do something great. Is it my job to tell him he can’t fly? He can’t change the world? Just because I feel so darn grumpy this morning? Or just because the world is a terrifying place where the most unimaginable things happen? Every. Single. Day?
He just finished the work. “I’m going out to fly mama!” Hope filled and an ear-to-ear grin. “I’m right behind you, hang on” I call to him. 
I grab a camera and chase the one who I know will one day conquer great things, for all the small he has to learn to conquer everyday.
“Do you think its going to work? I’ll climb up and you hand me my wings so they don’t break, okay? (he pauses) Maybe I should come down a few branches and try lower first?”
He trusts me, implicitly, despite my daily failing him. He knows I’m in his corner. Despite the thousand times I’ve wondered why he didn’t get a better mother than me, somehow he loves this one that he has. He asks if I think this is the right height. I breathe relief. I didn’t want to say it. Thankful he figured it out on his own. He waits and shouts “READY!” and jumps.
My eyes well up behind the lens because its not every day I see this kind of sheer glee from him. I love it. I love his sparkle and his creativity and his determination. I love the way he cradles grasshoppers and moths in his hands. The way he knows the sounds of different birds in our yard. I literally relish every single second because I know it won’t last an hour, maybe not even five minutes but the taste of this moments, these moments with this boy….they are so sweet my heart hurts.
Where big brother goes, little brothers long to follow. This does not always pan out well here. But it did today. Little brother searched for his own cardboard, his own scissors and tape and formulated his own ‘wings’. The littlest brother was happy to swing in the hammock chair while the big boys proved their awesomeness. The tree proved a challenge so we moved the picnic table to the edge of the deck which was a perfect, still challenging but not quite so crazy, height.
Someday his jump will take him out of my nest and into the wide world. I will miss his good days and his bad. I will miss the way he tucks himself under my arm on the couch because someday he won’t fit there. I will not always be his leading lady so I am determined to find more days like this one and love them with all my heart.
Table for Six 