i love this sky

We've developed some bad habits in the last few months.

One of them, which I know I've mentioned before, is that the kids refuse to go to sleep without us in the room. So to alleviate the mind-numbing boredom of staring at the ceiling while I wait for the little boy to go to sleep, I usually bring in a book to read, which is, incidentally, the reason why my eyes are giving out on me and I have the feeling that reading glasses are in my immediate future.

But that is neither here nor there.

So while I've been attempting to break this trend, I've still succumbed to all of their little manipulations, like Alex praying that someone (I, specifically) will lay down with him. Or Lily's pleas of, "I'm Scared". I just don't know how to say no to that.

Anyway, I was laying down with Alex reading "The Bean Trees", when Alex asked me to read to him. Not Willie Wanka and the Chocolate Factory, or Calvin and Hobbes, But what I was reading...The Bean Trees. Since I was just starting it and was unsure of how appropriate it would be for him, I began cautiously, but I soon realized that by substituting out a few "hells" and "damns" we were probably OK for content. I read a few pages to him, quizzed him on comprehension, and then came to a good stopping place with this quote...

There were two things about Mama. One is she always expected the best out of
me. And the other is that then no matter what I did, whatever I came home
with, she acted like it was the moon I had just hung up in the sky and plugged in all
the stars. Like I was that good.

So I said to Alex, "That's what I think of you."

And he said, "Well, when you come home from a place where I can't go, I think you are the sun and the clouds and all the whole sky."

And suddenly the fog of my upside-down life lifted and I saw this beautiful, sweet little boy who loves his mom as much as the sky, and I paused, stared at him, and then smothered him mercilessly in kisses.