By the time I get home from work, Shabd had already had his dinner. He was sitting on his grandparents stoep, passing his time drawing, while he patiently waited for me to get home. He was excited to show me his latest discovery; his shadow! He wiggled and jiggled and jangled to be sure the shadow on the ground really and truly was his. Do you remember when you discovered you had a shadow?
As soon as we got home, Shabd called out "Pappa, are you home?" When I explained to him that his father was out with friends for the evening Shabd proposed that we do some yoga. I politely declined and redirected his attention to the prospect of Skyping his Ba.
I forget that this child has the mind of an elephant sometimes. He readily agreed with my proposition, but insisted that we dragged our yoga mats to the study as well.
Unfortunately the connection to South Africa was not great and so every time we connected he would yell out quite loudly (as if he was sure his Ba was hard of hearing), "Hello! CAN YOU HEAR ME?" Eventually, Ba gave up on this mode of communication and called us up on our landline. Shabd had a rather adult conversation with her - him being almost three years old after all - narrating to her that "there's something wrong" with his tummy and could she "bring me a car please?" Solicitations done, he politely handed the receiver over to me and disappeared.
He reappeared 10 minutes later half dragging, half carrying his huge red basket of cars. He sorted through his basket, picking up and examining each car. By doing this, one by one he carefully lined the cars up from smallest to largest, keeping the construction vehicles, motorcycles and airplanes separate. We've come to learn that this ritual is something he loves doing and it seems to calm him as he debates the position of where the car he's holding in his hand right now should go. Sometimes, all the red vehicles are lined up together. Other times the vehicles are lined up by category; cars, SUV's, motorcycles, airplanes, construction vehicles. Sometimes we come home to a row of vehicles that spans our rather long kitchen and any disturbance in their order is met with much annoyance from the little Mr. (meticulous) Monk!
As I sat on the couch nearby and marveled at his little mind analyzing away until he was sure that he was happy with the order of his cars, a rather scary thought flashed into my mind. I often think to myself "things must be just right, just perfect or my world might collapse!" A little melodramatic I would agree, but as we all know, I have quite the flair for drama!
I don't think I've ever said this out loud - understandably, I try not to let the weird and wonderful musings of my mind come out vocally too often! The question does beg to be asked though, could Shabd have at some unconscious level learnt about my unreasonable need for perfection and be mirroring that?
Chocolate break!
We sing "There were 5 in the bed" and pretend to roll off the coach. We sing "the wheels of the bus go round and round" complete with hand actions and end off with the "head, shoulders, knees and toes" song to work off all the energy from the Lindt balls we've just devoured.
Then it's time for a shower and off to cuddle in bed while Shabd drifts of to dreamland.
Nothing special or extraordinary or particularly exciting happened tonight. It was an ordinary night and we did ordinary things like ordinary families do. I've not had ordinary in a long time. I miss ordinary sometimes. I long for the simple life of having spent a wonderfully ordinary evening together, having done ordinary mother-son things. Tonight, we did that and I feel as if a wish I had sent to the stars was granted to me. Amen!
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