Yesterday was a memory filled holiday with family and kids and noisy toys et al.
It was also the day of the year that the kids can't help but get up too early and then it's fun, fun, fun all the non-stop day---to where you don't want to pull away for anything as silly as a nap that will rob you of some quality time not to be repeated. So I fought the every increasing blurr that I had to haze through, as I kind of do all holidays and a fair number of regular days, to keep the Kodak moments coming.
When the day slows down, sometimes it catches up with you a bit.
Putting the kids to bed, as was customary, I lay down beside Lemur for our evening cuddle as he drifts off to sleep. It's something that I started with my daughter and have carried on ever since. It's a time when we lay in the dark for a few minutes of quiet discussion and wind down, usually just after I get home from work. As the kids have moved into their own rooms I have passed down to the next shift of under-teens. Lemur is the primary candidate at the moment. The little Bear is more partial to things that have scales and breathe pretend fire than the male parent. I'm holding out that his day will come.
As I lay down on top of the blankets that Lemur is under, he scrunches close and wraps my arm tight in a bear hug. He's of the strategy that the tighter he clings, the longer I'll stay. But this time he's outdone himself and his grip has given a small portion of his index finger the pins and needles. Not the whole hand, he tells me, not even the whole finger---just a small, very specific spot.
And as he's dealing with the discomfort, his mind wanders over to where "why is the sky blue" lives and he asks, "Dad, what makes you get pins and needles."
Well, he's a smart kind and ready, I think, to handle a more technical description of what is happening, so in my mind I gear up to phrase an answer about nerve endings and pinched signals and all that when I hear him suddenly ask, "What did you say?"
This confused me as at that moment I hadn't thought I had said anything. In fact, at that moment it was fuzzy to me that we were even involved in a conversation. "Um. . .I don't think I said anything."
"Just now, you were starting to say something about my finger and you just stopped."
Then it dawned---I had fallen asleep mid-sentence! Trying to recover, I began again talking about nerve endings and got to the point in the explanation where the ever so wise daddy says, "And because of that, this happens. . ." But as I was turning that corner I realized that I had no idea of what I had just said! I had said something, I was sure this time, but for all I knew it wasn't even a coherent sentence. But keeping the ball in the air, I plodded dutifully onward---"And that's why, bla bla bla. . ."
Finally finishing the explanation there was a pause and I could tell he was trying to make sense of everything I'd just said. Heck, I was trying to make sense of everything I'd just said. I'm sure it must have come out like some obtuse metaphoric platitude of a mountain top mystic, and bless his heart, he was searching like a little Padiuan for that ah-ha moment.
Then, to ease his mind, I pulled him close and told him we could talk more about this in the daytime (in my mind thinking, "when daddy is a little more lucid").
Another sterling Father/Son moment.
