last days

dear isaac,

i had very much hoped to record so much more during our last few days in your first home {second home, if you count my tummy as your first}. but things got quite hectic, and our move turned into an eleven-day ordeal {see last post}. a very exhausting, sometimes stressful, nothing-went-as-planned eleven days.

so, i'm lucky just to have taken a few pics of you in the rooms we once roamed. rooms you once ran around it... where you learned first to crawl, then walk. rooms where you hid so, so many things... like the pen cap to the fancy pen i received for standing up in a dear friend's wedding. i finally found it after a year when your dad and his friends picked up the large king-size bed to load onto the moving truck... there it was, on the carpet right smack dab in the center of the space that the bed took up, where no eyes or light could reach. i had searched every corner and cranny to no avail. only to find it on moving day... not far from where you sat in these photos.

these photos. oh, these photos. i love them so. i was busy in the living room, just around the corner a short distance down the hall. dad too. but he happened to look in on you at this very late hour on one of our last nights there. just you, a lamp, our tool box and one of your little matchbox cars.

unbeknownst to me and you, he took a similar photo with his phone. he showed it to me as i packed, and it made me stop. it took my breath away. i hadn't noticed in my busyness that you had been being so good and patient and content... with just a simple little car in an empty room... not even the bright orange tracks that you got for christmas to push the car around on.

just a tool box.

and his photo said it all {which is why i had to grab my camera and get some of my own}... a very good-natured little boy subjected to crazy eating and sleeping schedules who hardly fussed or complained, though nothing familiar surrounded you for those hours on end while we tirelessly packed and cleaned. hardly a complaint. just creative ways to play with your car.

as if you knew what we needed to accomplish... what needed to be done. my!!... if this is a taste of our lives to come with you, we are going to have an easy go of it. 

i can just see it. we won't have to push you to practice whatever sports or instruments you decide take up. we won't have to find ways to keep you entertained when we go on vacations. we won't have give you all the latest electronics and gadgets when you become a teenager.

maybe.

who knows. of course, you could change. and if you do, well then, i'll just chalk it up to typical adolescence or teenage-years behavior.

but that's okay too. i just know that right now, at less than two years old, you sort of amazed me.

not that you never cried and never got frustrated throughout the whole thing, because you sure did. but you know what? you were sick... first with a week-long stomach virus that had you throwing up. then with a relapse of your flu virus that had you coughing again and had your nose running twice as bad as the first round.

and on this particular night, you and your mama slept on the floor right there in that room. you conked out while your mama tried to keep you warm and comfortable and couldn't sleep because of all that she knew she should be doing. two hours sleep, she got. if that. laying there awake with you, worried for you.

while i remember that part of it, it's the parts where you made the best of things with the simplest of things that i will remember most. at such a young age, such a pioneer spirit. sleeping on floors. waiting on us from dawn 'til dusk with very little of what formerly surrounded you.

a real bright spot you were... to not have to worry about you too much. well, i did. but i didn't need to. don't even know if i'm making sense. i just feel so happy looking back... knowing that, as tough as those days were, you handled it so well. and i smile to see now in pictures what made me smile then in real time.

i kept finding them everywhere as i flew from room to room like a busy little packing bee. a total of six cars. sometimes they were all together. sometimes strewn throughout three or so rooms.

you found a myriad of places to drive them. none of them given to you or meant for the cars. some of them anchored and un-takable to your new house. all of them super interesting to the mind of a toddler who is fascinated with cars more than anyone i've ever known.

to be honest, it was a little bit convicting... or let's just say, a lesson was to be learned in it all for this big person who sometimes grows discontent and stuck and creatively blocked or bored with life.

i learned, like you... sometimes the fun is to be found under the empty shelves of an old abandoned office with nothing but a vacuum cleaner and some cleaning supplies. sometimes you just have to run around like a crazy person laughing and squealing with delight, one decible louder than the sound of the vacuum's motor, or take shelter under the shelving while you watch someone suck up all the hard-to-reach dust in the corners of spaces.

and smile as broadly as you possibly can while doing so!

and to quote your grandma, sometimes you just have to bloom where you are planted and be glad.

and you have to explore old places in new ways like you never have before. sometimes when there is less to see, there's more to see with. and it can be freeing.

you proved to me in those days that not only could you do it, but so could i if i just let myself... even made myself.

this is how you spent your last days in your first home.

i don't have detailed accounts of all the steps of the move... no precious pictures of me packing up some of your sentimental toys. no documentation of the various rooms as they went through the stages of furnished to packed to empty. {and that's a good thing, 'cause trust me... it wasn't pretty. it was basically what appeared to be an unorganized mess.} i've no room-by-room albums of the fun little place that was once our abode... with all it's interesting characteristics like the round shower in the bathroom or the curved wall in the hallway or the built-in shelving, odd closets and vintage nooks. nothing like what i thought i'd have done.

but i remember how very tired we all were, and i'm so glad i managed to get the few shots i did. i'll remember this move for all the best reasons. and i hope with this post, you will too. you truly made me a proud mama for that small, but rough, slice of your life.

one last photo. i had to capture it when i saw it....

i kid you not... during your very last bath in that nearly empty home, with nothing to play with but a few remaining letters and "bumbers" from your bath-time collection, you put up these letters... WE.

i highly doubt you know that word yet. maybe you recognize it when said and have an idea of its meaning, but i am pretty sure you can't spell it. but it didn't stop me from smiling when i saw it spelled there on the tub wall by your hand... as if you knew... WE are all together. WE all lived here together. WE all got through this tiring and long move together. WE are all moving to a new home and a new life together. WE made it. WE are together. 

WE are.

and i'll always treasure just what i saw there for that last little bath on that last night in our last home.

thanks for hanging in there. as you know full-well, things are not quite settled and normal yet. but they are a whole lot easier than those days. so i look forward to next sharing with you some photos and thoughts from our first days here.

home.

love, mama