Cam and Scott teach Mom her ABCs

A is for Accountability

I’m driving to fetch Cam. Scott Backseat-Driver Reyburn is strapped into his toddler seat behind me. There’s a traffic circle and another car and I’m not great with following distance and I brake a little hard. Silence. Then soft rebuke: ‘Careful Mom.’

B is for Balance

Cam wants me to play hiking-hiking. This involves imaginary trails and untold dangers and snacks and river crossings on the lawn. I tell him I’ve got varsity assignments to mark. I’ll be around but I won't be able to play much today. He goes all fists and fury and says, ‘You never hardly ever often play with us anymore!’ So we have a conversation about the wooden spoon. He gets polite again. I play hiking-hiking. The marking grows insidiously on the dining room table. Somehow it gets done.

And I’m astonished again by the hefty weight carried by time and focus and non-measurable results and intangible achievements and immediately unconstructive though eternally fruitful activities involving small growing people, on life’s heaped-heavy swaying-precariously scales of balance.

C is for Comfort

I’m in church at the back with Scott who doesn’t want to go to Sunday School and is cavorting wildly. I start crying during the worship because a close friend is really sick. I pull myself sort-of together because I don’t want to be that woman who weeps during worship. My eyes are sort-of dry and Scott climbs into my lap and cups my face in his chubby hands and says with all his soft heart, ‘You feeling calmer now, Mom?’

Five years ago today

My Cam,

This mad birthday week – you then Dad then me – kind of wipes me out (in a good way) because there’s always too much cake too close to Easter when there was too much chocolate but the wonderfulness of birthdays feels more wonderful to me every year and I didn’t want your 5^th one to pass without a blog post though I should probably be marking UNISA assignments which will hopefully pay for the car to be fixed as it’s still in the Eastern Cape and what I definitely should not do is have more caffeine.

I find myself staring so hard at you lately. I want to remember you just as you are – your dark intense gazing into life and your crazy silly spinning and giggling and your freckles and the way your hair stands up in the mornings and your angry tantrums and your lidless exuberance and your tight tight tight hugs and how you say random, amazing things with professor-ish eloquence and how often you tell me how much you love me.

Just for your record, here are some of the super cool things you’ve said or asked over the past couple of weeks:

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‘Now that I’m five I’m a tiny bit further from the floor. And the tiles look smaller ‘cause I’m further away from them.’

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‘Mom, if we were playing a baby Jesus game, what gift would you give him – gold, frankincense or myrrh?’

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On holiday, Dad took you for secretive slow drives through dark valley streets hoping to see bush pigs before bedtime. One night you said, ‘Dad, I have a message from Jesus in my heart. He says we mustn’t look for the bush pigs because they are scared.’

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‘Sometimes my eyes have a disability.’

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‘What does integrate mean?’

(I give a lengthy explanation about groups and slotting in and feeling comfortable and being part of a bigger whole…)

‘So then what is disintegrate?’

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‘Why is helium called helium?’

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‘Do you really get force fields?’

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Scott put his feet on the table at supper so I told him to take them off.

He did, and added with sincere, sublime charm, ‘Don’t worry, Mom!’

Then you said, ‘Don’t worry about anything, Mom! God is always with you so how can you worry about anything?’

I really didn't have a comeback. I really just wanted Scott to take his feet off the table.

As for Scott, he follows you and copies you and loves you fiercely. He digs his finger into your chest and says, ‘Jesus loves – you.’ (Sometimes he also bites you.) He counts when you play hide-and-seek (‘One, two, seven, eighteen! Coming, ready or not!’) What a gift you both are, each to the other. You play pirate-ships and scuba-divers and you go on space-rescue-missions and medieval-castle-drawbridge-manoeuvres and army-helicopter-fire-fighting-expeditions and no baddie is safe in our garden. The way your brother-hearts are knit together – it’s what Dad and I have prayed and prayed and keep praying – that for each other you’ll fight off bullies and be wing-man and best-man and best friend when you’re old and we’re long gone.

Precious, precious child. May the eyes of your heart grow clearer every day of this next year.

How proud I am of you.

How great is our God.

Happy birthday.

Love Mom

xx

 Mt St Cameron. Sparklers for the explosion. Then you and your friends did strawberry syrup lava and coconut ash.

Treasure hunt for gold nuggets scattered by volcanic activity...

 Playing pass-the-volcanic-rock

 Food. Silence.

 Ash.

 More ash.

 Lava.

 More lava.

 Cake.

 More cake.