Three cheers for Rockford, defender of dissertations and doctor of plant biology! (or something like that; please don’t ask exactly what it is he does. I know it isn’t microbiology, and it isn’t soil science. But that’s as far as my knowledge goes. Thank you.)
Monthly Archives: April 2006
A post-nap surprise
Just after Poppy woke up from her nap a few days ago, Marsha hopped up onto the bed and laid down on the baby’s lap. Poppy was beyond herself with excitement. She’s recently started (very, very slowly and laboriously) chasing Marsha around the living room. And suddenly, there she was! Right in Poppy’s lap! Ripe for the squishing and fur-pulling!
I was torn: Leave them there and run for the camera? Take Poppy with me and hope we could re-create the moment?
I let Poppy kneed Marsha’s fur for a little while, then picked her up and dashed for the camera. It took a little bit of coaxing to get Marsha to come back, but come back she did. She didn’t go straight for Poppy’s lap this time, but she got close enough to be within arm’s reach.
Real Life
It’s Saturday, but it’s pretty late and the Sunday Scribblers say it’s OK to go ahead and post my response. This week’s prompt is Real Life. I first tried to craft my response yesterday, but everything I wrote was pretty dreary. So I’m going to try it again with, we’ll hope, a little more sunshine.
“Real life” is not what I’d expected it to be. It’s bills and dishes and baked potatoes and vacuuming and scrubbing the bathtub and diapers diapers diapers. But it’s also so much more than I could have ever hoped. It’s Rockford bringing me breakfast in bed. It’s Poppy’s sweet smile and her giggles and her toes and her soft, shampoo-perfumed hair tickling my nose. It’s a warm cat, a cozy afghan and a good book on a chilly morning. It’s pie and ice cream on my birthday. It’s my friends and my family and knowing that I am loved. Knowing that I’m blessed.
And I am blessed. Every day. I know that, but it’s so easy to get bogged down in what “real life” was supposed to be, what “The Cosby Show” and the cotton commercials and the Lifetime movies said it would be. But I wouldn’t trade my real life for all the funky sweaters in Cliff Huxtable’s closet.