A couple of weeks ago True & I were having a midnight mom-&-boy serious talk about our Christmas Village. You know, how it was going to go, how the train was going to go around the entire yard & we'd cut holes in the walls & tracks up into the trees & all that. How we'd have goats & chickens by then & how the railroad would go around the animals, upsetting them with all those good train noises. And it would pass by our homeschooling & studio yurts on the way into the house, where it would eventually make it's way up onto our train table, because, that's where train tracks go.
Oh, it's sooo hard to hold back my instinct to shut down those ideas with a few "warnings" that we wouldn't be able to make it exactly like all that. Or really, anything like that, actually. I just don't want to disappoint him when he sees what we end up with. But I did my best, & managed to throw in my own fantastical ideas - like the yurts, for example. (We will have those. We will.) I was feeling very proud of myself as his picture became clearer & clearer, & could actually feel his trust in me building, to hold his idea fully. As a whole idea, not a chopped-up, mama-modified one. Yes. I was feeling quite proud of myself.
Then he sat bolt upright, looked at me & clapped his hands together. "Okay, Mom, now we have to do it this time. You always say we're going to do this kinda thing & we always don't get to it. WE REALLY GOTTA GET OUR BUTTS IN GEAR!"
Okay. Gulp. First he calls me on that thing. That thing all moms hope their kids don't notice - all the things we say we're going to do, but "don't get to." Then he cracks me up with that. That declaration. Inspiring. Like a little army general or something. Then I realize he means it.
"Well okay-then. Let's talk about it in the morning."
The next day we drew it all out & it became clear Luckily his plan required some serious handy-business, so there was that very important cushion to help out. We had ordered a bunch of real child-sized wood-working materials through his public homeschooling charter. Other moms with toddlers are somehow able to do everything under the sun. And there is just no possible way I could find time to show him how to use those things safely, let alone make the time to really build with him. We called his GranPops, the firefighter & electrician to set up a woodworking date.
So I sent him off to make the beginnings of his Christmas Village - maybe a little shed or something. And what came home? The Mount Washington. In our family, happiness is the Mount Washington. For the last 6 years, the island neighbors shared that top one up there. Then 2 years ago the one above appeared two cabins down. And now. He has one to share, too.
Pretty much a perfect Christmas, already.
Recent Comments