This Is What Happened On One Day In This Life

It was an Owen day and it was a good day.
My boy is changing so much and so quickly and I am constantly amazed at what I see and hear and observe in him. He holds his hand out to me to hold and it is a boy's hand now, definitely not a baby's. It is bone and flesh and purpose and the cleverness of the primate, the human.

He immediately wanted to go see the baby chickens when he got here. I had made oatmeal cookies- I finally did my baking- and I thought he'd want one but no, he HAD to go see the chicks and since I had one last batch in the oven, his daddy took him outside to see them. One of them escaped and was running around the little coop and I went out and helped them scoop him up and put him back.
"Chicken running around!" Owen said. He was delighted by this. "Running around EVERYWHERE!"



We did everything together today. We fed the goats some bolted collards and we played Hai Yah! or however you might spell that. We pretend-fished off the porch and I showed him how to hold a stick in his toes. He observed this and then did it too. We were monkeys with our toes. We looked at books, he washed dishes, standing on the step stool that he dragged into place all by himself, he played with his toys, we took a nap with Big Bear. I took him for a wheelbarrow ride, bump, bump, bump. We fed bread to the chickens and Cheerios too. "Here, Elvis, here!" he said, and threw the food. He can say everything. He asked for his Bop and I told him he was off fishing with Aunt Brenda in the boat.
"Nice," he said.
He asked me whose car was in the yard. He knew it wasn't one of ours. I told him it was Brenda's.
"Oh sure," he said.

He knows so much already. He is learning and retaining and he is loving and he is funny and he loved being here. When it was time to take him home, I said, "Owen, your mama misses you. It's time to go home to your house."
"No!" he said. "I stay Mer-Mer's."
Finally I got him ready to leave. He took a bag of cookies with him and a bar of soap that he wanted in another bag. He talked about taking his horse home with him but then he said sadly, "Too big."

On the way home I said, "Owen, Mer-Mer loves you so much."
"Uh-huh," he agreed. He knows.

When we got to his house, he ran in and kissed his mother, his baby brother. Lily asked me to hold Gibson and said, "He needs changing..."
She knows how much I love to change that boy. I took him into the bedroom and Owen raced in. "I help," he said. He perched on the end of the changing table, overlooking the process. He keeps a good eye on his brother. Gibson watches the mobile overhead that his Aunt May made which he loves. It has hearts and birds and bells and it fascinates him. Owen watches Gibson.

When I left, I stuck my head back in one last time to say this:

"Lily, you are such a good mother."

She is. Her house smelled of lentil soup that she was cooking and the cookies she'd made earlier. She had one son at her breast and another by her side.

I came home and tidied up. I rewashed dishes and put away toys. I called Bop at the island. I took Flopsy off the nest and put her out with the food and the water. I do this twice a day. The sun's last rays have changed from gold to silver. It is quiet here in Lloyd.

Listen- there is deep imperfection in this world and doubtless in me as well.
But.
It was a good day filled with many moments of what I can only describe as perfection. They were so small and so prosaic that I wonder if anyone but me would even have noticed them, would have registered them as such.

I do. I did. I am.

It was a good day. It was an Owen day. And he soothed my soul and he made me laugh and you know, for the first time ever since I've been writing this blog, I honestly think about that and hope that one day when he is grown, he can come back and read this and know how much joy he gave his grandmother. How beautiful she saw him to be. How fine.

That's all.

Yours truly...Ms. Moon