I’d woken with the dawn, and crawled in to bed with my still-sleeping 7-year-old to steal a cuddle when I saw it. A tiny dot, in the webbing of his finger, like someone took one of my Pilot fine-liners and pressed a black full stop into the base of his thumb.
A freckle.
“Hah. Look at that,” I thought to myself. “Travis has a freckle just like mine.” I stared at it, vaguely tickled that the genetics fairy saw fit to dot-dot-dot my first-born’s fingers with the same odd scatter of freckles I have on my own hands. I say odd, because I hardly have any freckles at all – just a flick of the freckle paintbrush. It looks like my kid was caught in the spatter too.
It’s while I was pondering this that a sense of déjà vu crept over me. I wasn’t just gazing at a freckle, but the Freckle. The one that I had written an entire blog post about when Travis was a baby. The one I had waxed poetic about like it was the 8th Wonder of the World.
I had forgotten about it.
For shame.
How much else had time erased from the blackboard where I had the longest list of all the things I love about my sons?
When Travis was a baby, I was infatuated with him, as only a new mother can be. I gushed about him to anyone who would ask, I made goo-goo noises and silly faces and gave him baby love names like “my little boo-boo-lah”. He was the centre of my world.
And then Ryan was born and the centre shifted into a new orbit. And then Oliver was born, and that orbit widened a little more so that all three of my children would fit inside the circle on my heart.
And then, and then…while we’re on the space metaphors…the orbit didn’t stop widening.
I ended up in an asteroid belt littered with all the mundane tasks of parenthood. Packing lunches, planning dinner, doctor visits, tripping over toys in the dark, cleaning up after potty-trainers, parent-teacher meetings, and oh-great-moons-of-Jupiter, the constant school emails and newsletters and forms and homework and show-n-tell and remembering which kid has library day when.
There was no time or energy for freckle gazing.
I had fallen out of love with my children.
Oh, of course I love-love them – but it’s a steady kind of love. The familiar throb of affection when I watch them climb the jungle gym, or share an ice-lolly. The quiet ‘hello there, flesh of my flesh’ I feel in the centre of my being when they wrap those skinny arms around me in a fierce boy-hug. The kind of love that you take for granted.
When I saw the Freckle again, I was reminded of all the small joys that make up motherhood.
I rubbed my own thumb gently over that freckle while Travis was sleeping, and I saw him, I really saw him with fresh eyes for the first time in a long time. Not Travis who needs me to sign his homework book and pack in swim shorts for splash time on Friday at school. But Travis, whose hair is thick as a bear’s, who loves caramel Marie biscuits, and twirls his left foot anti-clockwise when he’s excited.
Later that day, I was watching a movie with Trav’s little brothers, one boy under each of my arms. Well, they were watching the movie, but I was watching them (I’m sure I’m not the only parent who does this).
And then I saw it. Another freckle, this one on Ryan’s hand – I had never noticed it before. I searched Oliver hands, and a speckle too, not on his hand but in the crook of his wrist. “Same-same!” my boys would shout.
They’re not freckles, really. They’re teeny Post-it notes from the universe reminding me to really see my children, to look closer. They’re the punctuation mark at the end of this love letter.
I love everything about you, my boys. Full stop.
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