These days, you recite a French poem at the dinner table about a dog who doesn’t like cats or bunnies or chickens. I don’t understand it. But I understand that you think you’re telling a silly story, while your teacher thinks she’s teaching you French grammar and negative sentence structures.
These days, you wiggle your front tooth with your tongue, and I wince as it flaps about. These days are the days before your toothless grin, before a gap in your smile, before a new toothy smile filled with adult teeth. These are the days you hope you’ll lose the wiggly tooth at school so you can get a plastic toy chest from the office. We’re in the days when I learn they’re called “bell teeth.” We’re still years away from your molars falling out, just past your first cavity, a few weeks shy of the first lipstick you’ll wear at your first dance recital.
We’re in the days when you can spell “love” and “Mama” and “Dada” and “to” but still need help spelling “from” and “Grandma” and “Grandpa.” I know you could spell “Nanna” if you tried—but you always ask me anyway.
We’re in the days of your first Scholastic book fair when you call the catalogue a magazine and say. “We don’t need it anyway because I know what I want.” And I know what you want too. You want Bluey’s Vacation and I know I’ll buy it for you because your Bluey stage will run its course soon and then I won’t be able to watch cartoons about a dog mom who just can’t relax on vacation as hard as she tries.
We’re in the days of an H-shaped band aid over the stitches you got from a skating accident and before the days when we know what the healed scar will look like. We’re in the days of palms covered with popped blisters from the monkey bars and Dada explaining what calluses are. We’re in the days of being able to skip monkey bars but “only on the moving ones.” We’re in the days of “did you get blisters when you were a kid, Mama?”
We’re in the days of hot lunches, of mac and cheese and banana smoothies. We’re passed the days when I didn’t know I was supposed to pack a fork. Passed the days when I arrived at 12:10pm instead of 12pm to volunteer to put out the lunches. We’re in the days of Grandma and Grandpa feeding you Annie’s pasta and Nanna feeding you frozen Amy’s lasagnas. We’re in the days of Oikos lime yogurt and chopped up sausage and koala cookies from Costco. We’re in the days where I still pack carrot sticks even though they always come back uneaten.
These days, I try not to think of the days when you won’t call me Mama anymore and no longer ask “What do you like better: Spaghetti or lasagna? Unicorns or horses?” The days when girls teasing won’t just be sticking out tongues. The days when you won’t give me running hugs and crawl into our bed for Cocomelon in the morning. These days, I worry I won’t remember whether you preferred Blippi or Meekah.
I wonder what will happen to the drawings in that bank box I meant to do something with. I wonder about the boys in your class and if one day I’ll have to avoid eye contact with their moms when we run into each other in the pool change room. I wonder who you’ll be once soccer teams have try-outs. I wonder what life will be like when the pancakes I make aren’t purple from the sprinkles you put in. I wonder about the days beyond riding pretend unicorns to school. The days when we no longer read “Schtoompa the Funny Austrian” and “Glip and Glop, the Greek Painters.”
Will I ask, “Do you remember when you called excavators snorts?”
“Do you remember how I had to explain Taylor Swift to you?”
“Do you remember that poem about dogs who didn’t like cats or bunnies or chickens?”
“Do you remember your negative French sentence structure?”
Is that what I’ll ask? Or will I just ask, “Do you remember how much I love you?”
