Henry has grown three inches since school began in August.
I swear I can hear it at night when he sleeps, a creaky groan over the baby monitor I can’t seem to part with. I like hearing him in the night, his little coos and sighs, his snores and babbling. Sometimes, he says my name.
Mama!
He’s such a big, wild boy now in his underpants and crewcut. Every month his father takes him to the barber and he comes home shorn, a little sheep, a cadet, a seal pup. His eyes get exponentially bigger as his hair gets shorter. His face is changing, morphing from baby to boy and back again in the same frame of film.
He winks at us from the other side of the dinner table and dabbles in potty humor. Brushing his big sister’s hair while he watches in the morning, I ask her, rhetorically, what happened overnight to tangle it so.
Maybe, he answers me, it was a HAIR-icane!
He is built like a whippet and swims like a fish, jumping off the high diving board into 12-foot-deep water and the arms of his swim teacher with absolutely no hestitation. He trusts her to catch him.
He trusts.
At night when we cuddle he is all mine, the door shut on all the distractions and the new complications of raising a 7-year-old girl. She is beautiful, complex and tender and I handle her like glass, fearing that I may break her.
He is wiry, wiggly and still close enough to his primal self to see me simply as mother — softness, safety and solace. During the daylight hours he mimics the big boys but alone in the dim glow of his nightlight he is my baby again.
Every day as he leaves me I give him a kiss for his pocket and he gives me two in return.
I use them both before I drive away, and pine for the end of the day when we two are together and quiet, his wildness tamed.
Mama, he says, Mama I need a tight snuggle. Mama, when I am big will you still snuggle me and read me stories?
Yes, my wild boy, for as long as you will have me.
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