The Walk

December 2nd:

The boy can sometimes say and do the most ordinary things but they touch a chord somewhere in me - makes my love just overflow.

I was going on my usual evening walk in the neighborhood with the monster - Ammi and Thaththo was coming too.  The boy decided he was joining us, and he stopped watching the movie, put his coat on, his shoes on... he was ready.

As we walk he holds my hand and already I am a melted mess!  I think it is just adorable that at 7 years old he will still hold my hand.  Then as we walk along the sidewalk he spots an inflatable decoration in someone's front lawn - a snow globe with Santa inside and a motor that makes a continuous "snow fall".  Oh, he is so excited.  He walks up to it and admires it.  And then a few houses down the decoration is strings of colored lights - he is elated.  He is pleased that we will make detours from our usual out-and-back routine to check out more lights that he has spotted.  And then it is another globe and another string of blinking lights and a tree wrapped in lights etc etc.  He is just so very happy - it almost makes me cry, to see how happy he is with these ordinary, very unremarkable lights that I barely notice on my nightly walk.

He is pleased to have Thaththo's flashlight.  He flashes it everywhere - on to the Christmas lights, up the trees, in to people's back yards!!  He casts our shadows on to the street and pretends we are walking in the middle of the street.  He is in his own make-believe world, making up stories about our walk, he is happy.

As we walk he tells me about the snack that he packed for our "hike".  He packed two blueberries, he brought them along in his hand and he is worried that two blueberries are not enough to sustain us on our hike.  He wishes he had brought more, but he couldn't find anymore.  He wishes he had a plastic bag to put the berries in because he is concerned that they will get squished before we get to eat them.  He is such an innocent, unsophisticated, open little kid, it touches a soft spot deep inside me - I want to protect him from the world in a way that I don't believe my two nieces need to be protected.

A tiny drizzle has started on our way home and I put his hood on and zip him up to his chin.  He has slipped his arms out of the sleeves and has them next to his body.  I hold on to one empty sleeve to cap it off so that cold air doesn't seep in through it to the body.  He says "Nanda, can you hold the other sleeve too?".  So I hold on to both empty sleeves so that they are capped so that cold air doesn't blow through either of them, and keep him warm.  My lovey...  :)

And then we get home and I expect that he would tell everyone (his sister, my brothers, etc) about his exciting adventures and what he saw and what they missed from not coming on our big "hike" - but a DVD is playing (Madagascar 3 for the 15th time???), and he sits down and watches it with the rest of them, and that is that.