Fingers & Toes Crossed

I, M, & L

My three grandkids were together recently. I is almost 11 months, M is 3 1/2, and L is almost 18 months. 

Like my grandson in this pic, I grew up with cousins, two girls close to my age, one older and one younger. 

Gen X kids, we mostly raised ourselves. It wasn't easy. We knew how to fend for ourselves and how to disappear, but we filled our hiding places with music and candy and pretend and stories but mostly laughter, that sort of laughter that makes breathing sporadic. (You'd understand what was so funny if you watched us perform The Most Beautiful Girl in the World in a freezing cold unfinished basement for an audience of one bored and one bewildered cat.) 

With much to learn and no one safe to ask, we figured life out together, without judgment or shame—so relieving for a group of offbeat oddballs. Uncertain about ourselves, but relying on each other, our promises were kept: we crossed our hearts and hoped to die. We forgave each other's mistakes, all of them, I hope? Throughout childhood, there were few people I trusted more than those two. 

Inevitably, life led us in different directions. I miss them. I'm grateful for the cushion we constructed between ourselves and the world, and so of course I will foster this bond in I, in M, in L. And perhaps someday, fingers and toes crossed, my cousins and I will spend an entire sunrise to sunset with each other again. And since we no longer have to sneak whiskey shots, perhaps karaoke? 〵(⌒˽⌒)〴

Dear friends, did you grow up with cousins? 

Take Hold

I's hands

Ten-month old toddler hands rarely cease. 

Curious, her hands examine all things in her path from the stuffed bunny's button tail to the start "button" on the dump truck. Chewing a toy then dropping it and crawling to the next, climbing up the coffee table and inching her hands to one coaster, then the next, and the next. 

She absorbs this life hands first, then into her mouth, her eyes darting from one pursuit to the next, her ears perked by toys that beep or spin, then kitchen noises, then my voices. I wonder, what does she smell? Perhaps smell develops slowly, thankfully unadvanced until post-diaper life? 

I use ASL to encourage her with my own hands: yes and yes and yes. 

Oh to be a new human again, and take hold of the world.