Hey, White Man!

Owen, like many children his age, has a grand vocabulary and he loves to use it but he still has troubles, you know, with his pronunciation. Well, he is not yet even three (but soon! so soon!) and his tongue and his mouth are not quite formed like an adult's and so there are words which need translation and usually, his mother and father and I are pretty good at that.
Some words that he says sound exactly like one thing but mean another.
Such as- the light man. Ever since the power went out at their house a few months ago and there was much talk of the "light man" coming to fix it, Owen has been fascinated with these men who control the power. When he talks on the phone in pretend conversation, he usually talks, in fact, to the light man. However, he does not say "light man." He says "white man."
W for L. Very common.

But it always cracks me up to hear him say, "Hey White Man! You coming fix our power?" and he has his conversation and he says, "Good-bye, White Man!" and he hugs the phone and kisses it and hands it over to me. Sometimes he insists that I, too, speak to the Light Man and if I forget to hug and kiss the phone, he chides me and demonstrates how it is to be done.

Today was the day the cable guy was coming to Lily's house and I got this message from her this morning: "Owen just called the very tall, very black Comcast guy the white man."

We should have seen that one coming.

She said that she told him, "That's not the light man, that's the TV man." And then Owen proceeded to ask the TV man many questions such as, "TV Man, you seen my baby?" and "TV Man, you got a baby?" and so forth.
TV Man said that yes, he has two babies of his own. I think Owen was enchanted. I suppose that now TV men are held in his regard right up there with Light Men.

Ah. That child. It broke my heart today when he said the word "Towboy" for "cowboy" instead of "Toeboy" which is what he used to call them. He is growing up. He is learning. And will break our hearts over and over, but as I said this morning, they will not truly be broken. They will have tiny scars all over them where yes, they have been oh, slightly pierced by him, but they will be so much the better for that. Our hearts, that is.

We went to Costco today, Lily and Jason and Gibson and Owen and I. Gibson is much better, but not yet quite himself. He is not really fussy so much as just a little moisty in the eyes. A little less full of life-force than usual. Owen did not want to sit in the cart, of course. He never does. But today we told him that his brother could sit next to him and oh! then! it was fine. His brother! Was going to sit next to him! And we strapped them both into that giant cart which I used to make such fun of- what a ridiculous thing for us ridiculous Americans with our ridiculous giant purchases of forty-eight rolls of toilet paper and plastic boxes of spinach the size of dog kennels, and so forth. But I tell you what- you put two brothers in one of those things AND the diaper bag AND the grandmother's purse AND the cloth bags to pack everything in and there is barely room for that spinach and forget the forty-eight rolls of toilet paper. So it was a merry jaunt down the aisles and Owen was so excited to go into the cold produce room and he showed me how to hold my arms to keep warm and he shivered in exaggerated delight and he told Gibson that it was okay and we were SO happy to come back out of the cold room right into the area where they were sampling raviolis and so forth and well, I can hardly imagine having more fun at Disney World than I do on a simple trip to the Costco with my boys.
Owen was like a mother hen. If his father stopped to look at something or if I wandered away to check something out, he called us. "Daddy! Where Daddy?" "Mer-Mer! Where at?" He wanted us all to be together. He delighted in it. He was a wonderful big brother and he offered to share his veggie straws with me because he is a generous boy and a sweet one.

He also pointed at his mother and me and said, "You my poop boys!" His obsession with poop continues and he inserts that word into every conversation that he can. And we? We are terrible. We simply laugh although today, after I laughed I said, "Owen, first off, your mother and I are not boys."
"We are girls," Lily said.
"And we are not poopy!" I told him.
But then we laughed again so that lesson was not truly learned.

Yes. It was a good outing.

And Mr. Moon called me a little while ago and said, "We are coming home. We are tired."
And so they are.
Tired and coming home. They could have hunted one more time tonight on their tags but I think the idea of how difficult it would be to get a gator in the boat if they DID catch one was more than they could bear. For an entire week they have launched at dusk and hunted throughout the night, piloting that boat down creeks and rivers and they have loved it and they have seen beautiful things and I'm sure they're so glad they went even though they didn't catch a monster gator but I think they are simply DONE!

I fussed a little when Mr. Moon called because I hadn't had time to tidy up the house and so forth but he assured me that they did not care at all and I'm sure they don't. I am washing the guest bed sheets because I slept on that bed for two nights and Jessie and Vergil slept on it for two nights and it is only polite to give Gary From Canada clean sheets. Eh?
(He really does say that, eh?)
And they're going to get leftover soup and that is just that and they can watch TV or whatever they want and bask in the joy of clean clothes and clean sheets and clean towels and a night of real sleep.

So my man will be home and Jessie and Vergil made it back to Asheville safely and I have a new coffee carafe and there are clean sheets and clean towels and the mermaid lamp is in the library.

The dogs are groomed, I have taken the trash and the recycle, and the gators of Franklin County have not declined in number, at least by these hunter's hands but the hunters know the rivers and waterways now in ways which they never would have before and have seen the birds fly into the dawning sky, the dolphins playing at dusk, and are probably quite reminded of how much they do love the comforts of home.

Owen and Gibson are coming out tomorrow for awhile and maybe Boppy will be here and won't that make Owen happy? Happier even than having the TV Man or the Light Man come to his house. Or White Man. Whatever. And Gibson is always happy.
So. There you go. Another day in the life.

Or at least, this one. We cannot go to Disney World every day nor would we want to but we can have adventures and joy doing the simplest things and for that, I am most grateful and aware of the blessings of our silly, prosaic lives.

Love...Ms. Moon