Perspective, Burgers Night, Africa and Dog Toenails

Today we drove by our old apartment and it was green and beautiful in Central Park, and we were filled with thoughts of our furry pup. I was reminded of how some nights I put off walking him until it was so late I couldn't put it off any more. Our doorman would hear us coming and know by the combination of our toenails and rain boots whom to expect. He, regal and imposing in his uniform, protectively silhouetted in the doorway, watching for my safe return. We would chat late at night, he and I. Admiring each other--me for his fluency in so many languages, his comfort with a continent I find utterly exotic, his work ethic, his single-minded goal of being here for ten years in order to build a home in Africa for his family. I imagined the sun as it rises in his homeland, the dusty road, the marketplace and the familie ties. And he? I don't know why he admired me, or even, for sure, that he did. He thought I worked hard, carrying babies and things for the kids, and he saw my dedication to them. He liked my dog and tossed him treats caught in floppy canine lips, wrenched apart with a sucking sound just before impact.
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Tonight it was just the boys and I, all three of them, since Maya was away at a sleepover birthday party. Burger and movie night. How strange, the balance of life, how you wish for one thing, and you can't see your way out of where you are and then one day, there you are on the other side, nostalgic for what you have left behind. It was strange today to have a family composed of only boys. How different things would be without our little U.N. peacekeeping girl. She orchestrates, helps, brightens the room. She pretty much does anything that is asked, patiently, tirelessly and happily. I remember a time when she cried whenever I walked out the door and I longed to be away from the suffocating phase of a child who forever orbits around only myself. Now she is with other girls, in the Bronx watching stars from the roof and eating sweets and staying up late giggling.
It may have crossed my mind a time or two that Banchi wouldn't live forever on a night when I didn't want to go outside. His clicking toenails grated on my nerves as he surreptitiously suggested it might be time to go out. Here I am with the renewal of license from the state of NY, and for the first time I have to check the box that says I don't own him anymore. He will be officially gone and out of the record books. Wish I could hear his nails clicking once again and bury my face in his furry little head.
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Oh, to be a master of perspective. To bear work and weariness and sadness and struggle with grace, knowing that you will one day look back and see things in a different light. Jonah is learning this right now, and every day we have to talk about it in one form or another. Yesterday, we played a game from his history curriculum and it required small playing pieces. His were Cheerios. Nobody told Simon that the Cheerios weren't up for grabs, and half way through the game he ate them. Jonah ran crying to the other room, but today when we retold the story, he laughed. A deep, belly laugh. I am so proud of him for that, I'm not sure why. Maybe because it feels like a circle, to have another child doing to him what he did to Maya and I can see him coming out the other side, even though he sometimes does it kicking and screaming. He tries to carry Simon, who patiently endures being dragged with limbs hanging or belly squeezed. The expression on his face is resigned, neutral, that of kid brothers everywhere. He is little, he knows it, and the others can take him where they wish. It is usually interesting, so for now he plays along. He adores the big kids, but he wants to touch everything they are doing, and the result is almost certainly that he upsets their game, rips their picture, bends the cards, scribbles in their books. He is a handful, in every sense of the word. He is walking, two steps at a time, but he largely crawls since he is so fast. He requires so much attention--he wants to learn everything and touch it all and he is destructive and persistent. It is exhausting. I call upon the lessons of my past to see that the warm softness of a bright eyed little miracle will one day go the way of the clicking toenails, and those dimpled hands and chubby feet will have turned into competent and strong replicas of adults.
Deep sigh, and a reminder to be in this moment while it lasts.