Monday, October 4, 2010

Not even the rain has such small hands

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands
 

I used to love e.e.cummings.  Well, not that I don't anymore.  I just haven't read poetry in ages.  And maybe now that I'm older, many years into the biggest romance of my life, rearing two small children, and more concerned with things like sleeping, making healthy, well-rounded meals with a toddler attached to my leg, trying to invent ways to keep spit-up off my floor/furniture/clothes/hair, and wondering what on earth Jack has been consuming that are making these diapers so unbearable ... (deep breath), well maybe this is all why I've suddenly asked myself the question: "Rain, hands?  What does it meeaaannn?"  Well, I don't have an answer, just a lovely title for a blog post.

 
So yes, it rained the other day.  And rained, and rained.  It was the rain we've been waiting for all summer.  And now it is fall. My first thought when I woke up was "Wow, it's dark."  Then the boys got up, we started our day, I started missing England, we couldn't go to the park so instead we made a blanket fort.  You know the story.  But you can only crawl through a blanket fort so many times. I decided to peak out the front door and try to take a few rain snapshots, since I haven't got to try my camera out on puddles yet.  Well of course Jack was right behind me and... the rest is history.

 
What started out as a little playtime on the front porch eventually led to a full-fledged rain dance.  I decided now would be a great time to finally get Jack in those galoshes that Aunt Kate handed-down to us last year.  And of course, I had just read that morning about how at-home moms have the advantage of arranging activities during the day that "foster budding intellects and awaken curiosity" and was feeling a bit convicted that maybe I don't do this enough.

 
And yes he got throughly soaked.  Which wasn't necessarily a bad thing.  He's just getting over a cold so I figure his immunity is the highest it will ever be.  And he really needed a good shower to wash all the yogurt out of his hair.  What I didn't consider was the mud.  Jack's a magnet for mud puddles.  There's one at the end of our driveway that he heads straight for every time we go out to the car.  By the time I set Jude down and run over to grab him, he's already passed through it 5 times.  But today's rain made bigger, badder puddles right in our yard.  And although it took him a few seconds to warm up to the idea of leaving the porch and intentionally getting rained on, you can bet it all took all the coercing and creative lunch ideas I had in me to convince him to come back inside again. 


 
And me, I sat right inside the door.  I thought about running out there and joining him but I do have another child to consider.  So I sat on the stoop, trying to appear like the responsible adult when my neighbor walked out to his car and saw a young child playing in the front yard.  With one eye on my big baby, rain dripping off his hair, watering the flowers and the other eye on my little baby sitting in the swing by the window, soaking it all in, and both hands on the camera, the sound of the shutter going off every other second because you never know when your never-stops-moving kid is going to look up and smile, or do that cute, adorable thing he does and you never want to forget. 



So you just keep snapping away, piling up shots to sort through late at night when the little ones are in bed.  When you aggravate over whether Jack's eyes look better in DSC_0385 or DSC_0387, or maybe you should go with your original choice of DSC_0382.  Or does the picture look better with Jude's hand at his side, or up by his face.  If only I could take DSC_0291's smile and combine it with DSC_0297's hands, and have the same lighting that's in DSC_0289.  *sigh*



And this is important, this way that digital photography has totally revolutionized the way I spend a fraction of my free time.  Because some rainy day 15 years from now, I don't know if my son is going to want to jump in puddles or play video games.  And all I'll have left of his galosh-wearing days are the pictures I took, the ones that I agonized over whether to keep or delete, on the day I sat on my doorstep, remembered e.e. cummings, and tried to look like the responsible mom I hope my neighbors think I am.

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