Magic Moments

      Time ticks along in ones but it will stand still for no man, or woman, or baby. It follows a clear prescribed path just as the sun in the heavens.
     “Come here to me my love and let me wrap you up warm. Bring me your buttoned shoe. Where is your other sock?”
     “One, two, buckle my shoe” you sing, stretching pudgy arms up to my neck with blithe joy.  I smile at your song. Such a carefree babe, I think you will sing your journey from source to sea what ever rocks and waterfalls lie in your path. You drop a succulent kiss to my cheek leaving a cold spot where your nose touches my skin. Frowning with grave intensity you pull away.
      “Where Mummy’s earring?” I touch the lobe and find it wanting of decoration but have no time to think where or how I could have lost the trinket so remove the other and place it on the settle.  How long will it stay there I wonder, six months, two years? Nothing gets done anymore. Landscapes are made of necessity. I was still waiting for the day I would morph into the Yummy Mummy I expected to be, juggling all the requirements of motherhood and home and wife with ease. One of these days it will be me I had believed, but not today.  Mine was always the bag with nappies spilling out, the toddler with only one sock, one shoe, invariably on opposite feet. Yes my vegetable purees were home made but it was more often than not smeared across my shirt front or flicked in my hair. Order had turned to chaos, along with the odd sock, the hairbrush and now the single earring, which would some day turn up in an Aladin’s cave of wonders.
      Routine was important, all the books said so. Time for playgroup; the simple happy flock.  I slip on your froggy wellies and toggle your coat ruffling your hair before jamming a rainbow fleece hat on top of your curls.Wrapping a woollen scarf around my own neck against the cold we braved the frost together,crunching on dried mud and leaves hand in hand. Water in the puddles had frozen into ice, skeletal leaves adrift, frozen in time.
      “Jump!” you cry stamping your wellies and I whisk you through the clouds from our breath. “Again, again!” The journey is part of the adventure.
     Finally we reach the church hall and unbuckle your layers, revealing the toddler within. You run ahead of me shouting, jubilous. All the new words you have learned come tumbling forth in a jumble of exuberance and you crash straight into your friend who bounces backwards and lands on his bottom
     “Ouch?” you say in expectation of his response. But he had learned some new words of his own.
     “Ouch?” he marvelled. “Simple girl!”