Wrote this shortly after Sebas turned 3...
6 March 2008
I’m telling you, pal, you ran your way out of being 2. Like you just couldn’t wait to be 3. We finished up at the bookstore in Georgetown, and you started pushing your cooing. Running up Pennsylvania Avenue. You’re so fast, Sebas. Dada had to run to keep up with you. Mommies was toting Oscar in the tummy, of course, so we stopped from time-to-time to let her catch-up. You didn’t want my hand on your shoulder. You had to run free yourself. You ran all the way to George Washington University Hospital, until the road ran out. Got you some T-shirts to sleep in since we left your PJs at home. Then you ran back to the hotel. What a beautiful day. You ran up and down H street between New Hampshire and 25th, back and forth, pushing your cooing, dodging people, checking out Mommies, red cooing you were.
What a great little trip to Washington that was. Had your birthday with me and Mommies and Nancy at Bistro Francais. She gave you bubbles and you’ve been playing with them all day today, Mommies tells me. You slept through dinner, then woke up in the cooing on the way back to the hotel.
We played and read books. You so love to read. “Read me a book,” you say. “Play with me, Dada.”
We play a lot of games, usually where you “push me down,” then proceed to jump on me. We “fight.” I do you “upside down monkey.”
Looks too rough to Mommies, and to grandmommy and granddaddy. But you love it, and I love it. Even Bum of the Face, a game from Lesotho that almost got you killed one night over there when you did it to Mommies and she flung you up in the air instictively. You were heading off that tall bed we slept in over there, straight for that rock hard cold floor. Somehow I was able to reach over the bed and catch you, halfway down. You’ve never Bum-on-the-face’d Mommies ever again, needless to say.
In Lesotho I used to give you a bath most every night. You’d play and swim in the tub. I let you do it even though the water wasn’t the cleanest, so much you loved it. Would try to keep you from drinking that sometimes green-with-chlorine stuff. Could only get you out by playing Nora Jones “Don’t know why…”
You knew all the words. I remember you singing it to me one beautiful day shourtly after you turned two. You were in the pack riding on my back like we did in Africa. Up in Golden Gate, way out by the vulture restaurant. We were up there with Tony and Greg, and all the Jesuit boys, and your sometimes-buddy Ella. Walking back to the car from a great hike where we looked over the edge all the way to the far Draks. I remember trying to watch my step on the rocks so we wouldn’t fall, and you singing Don’t know why, softly, the words just a little bit your own.
Like I have so many times these first 3 years, Sebas, right then I wished time would stop, that you’d always be 2, and up on my back, and us walking along that ridge in Golden Gate.
What a great little trip to Washington that was. Had your birthday with me and Mommies and Nancy at Bistro Francais. She gave you bubbles and you’ve been playing with them all day today, Mommies tells me. You slept through dinner, then woke up in the cooing on the way back to the hotel.
We played and read books. You so love to read. “Read me a book,” you say. “Play with me, Dada.”
We play a lot of games, usually where you “push me down,” then proceed to jump on me. We “fight.” I do you “upside down monkey.”
Looks too rough to Mommies, and to grandmommy and granddaddy. But you love it, and I love it. Even Bum of the Face, a game from Lesotho that almost got you killed one night over there when you did it to Mommies and she flung you up in the air instictively. You were heading off that tall bed we slept in over there, straight for that rock hard cold floor. Somehow I was able to reach over the bed and catch you, halfway down. You’ve never Bum-on-the-face’d Mommies ever again, needless to say.
In Lesotho I used to give you a bath most every night. You’d play and swim in the tub. I let you do it even though the water wasn’t the cleanest, so much you loved it. Would try to keep you from drinking that sometimes green-with-chlorine stuff. Could only get you out by playing Nora Jones “Don’t know why…”
You knew all the words. I remember you singing it to me one beautiful day shourtly after you turned two. You were in the pack riding on my back like we did in Africa. Up in Golden Gate, way out by the vulture restaurant. We were up there with Tony and Greg, and all the Jesuit boys, and your sometimes-buddy Ella. Walking back to the car from a great hike where we looked over the edge all the way to the far Draks. I remember trying to watch my step on the rocks so we wouldn’t fall, and you singing Don’t know why, softly, the words just a little bit your own.
Like I have so many times these first 3 years, Sebas, right then I wished time would stop, that you’d always be 2, and up on my back, and us walking along that ridge in Golden Gate.
No comments:
Post a Comment