- I comb the wet bangs down over my eyes and grip the bottom of the middle section between two fingers. With the other hand, I slowly slide the shears across my forehead, chomping hairs like a little alligator between my eyebrows. I move to the right and left sections, trying to cut them evenly, remembering not to raise my eyebrows. Tons of little hairs, each about a centimeter long, litter the sink and counter. While I fine-tune and snip the strays I’ve missed, I try to remember the trim prior to this one—wasn’t it just a few weeks ago? Maybe a month? And in a month or so, I’ll be back again.
2. It’s the first chilly morning of the school year, with temps in the low 50s, so we dig out the basket of sweatpants that has been waiting, lonely on a closet shelf for several months. When my middle son pulls the royal blue sweat pants on, we giggle at the expanse of exposed ankle. “Have you really grown this much over the summer?” I ask in surprise. I toss the pants in a pile to save for his younger brother and make a mental note to go through the rest of his clothes later today. While he makes his bed, I glance into the hallway and see his picture on a wall: a sleepy newborn, only five days old. All I think is, How?
3. I kneel on a towel at the pool’s edge, warm in my jeans, my bangs starting to cling to my forehead in the humid natatorium. It’s T’s seventh day of swim lessons, and he’s learning to float like a starfish. He tips his chin up toward the ceiling, spreads out his “airplane arms,” and I smile when 10 little red toenails pop up (the handiwork of his big sister). I hear him counting aloud, “One, two, three, four!” and suddenly he spins his hips and swims, facedown, toward the instructor. He surfaces with a smile, and tears prick my eyes. The apprehension and nervousness of the first few days has melted away. No more thrashing, no more fear. Just a calm, happy little fish.
4. She chose her own outfit this year: pink shirt, white cardigan, black skirt. She did agree to swap the skirt for pants (i.e., warmth) after I reminded her they wouldn’t be in the picture, but I knew better than to involve myself further into the fashion conversation. That morning she sat on a stool in the kitchen (where I could better keep an eye on her brothers) while I sectioned her hair and curled it with a curling iron, setting everything with a fine mist of finishing spray. “You look lovely,” I said, watching her watch herself in the mirror, taking in the blue eyes, freckles, and mouth full of braces. I thought about how different her smile will look in this year’s school picture compared to last year, before she had the braces put on. I gave her a kiss on the head and we herded the boys to the van. And what will her smile look like next year?
5. The sunflower seeds were a Mother’s Day gift, handed to me just weeks before our cross-country move. My son’s kindergarten teacher, anticipating our road trip, sent the unopened packet of seeds home rather than having them planted in soil. “You can take them with you and plant them when you get there,” she said. But in the craziness of moving across three time zones with three young kids, a dog, etc., we forgot to plant them. One year later, I spotted the seeds in the refrigerator door, where I had stashed them in the hopes that they’d last longer. I found an empty pot in the garage and a small bag of potting soil, and poked a single seed into the crumbs of dirt. Each day, I watered it, amazed when a small curl of green emerged, and returned each day to water and inspect the growth as the leaves unfolded and the stem reached slightly closer to the sun.
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Melissa Kutsche 