How Do You Measure

I was outside this crisp fall morning working on my stone retaining wall in front of our house, with the two boys playing in the yard, when Green Bean fell and hurt his finger. I picked him up and held him, stopping to soak in the feeling of holding his long slender body in my lap, dreading the day he outgrows that kind of treatment, when he reached down and picked up the tape measure I'd been using.

He stretched it out in front of my shoulders. "I measure you, Mommy."

"Oh. How wide am I?" Content that this is no actual measurement being taken.

"Um... 4 pounds."

"Okay, that's not so bad."

"I 4 pounded you."

You have to record conversations like this, because they don't stay in the memory forever, and they're impossible to recreate. I remember being a motivated colorer of coloring books as a child (my siblings and I were ever competing for who could stay in the lines best), as we got to get a new one only after we'd finished the one we currently owned. I'd developed into an expert colorer, so it was with fascination that my mom brought out a coloring book I had used as a toddler. I couldn't believe those scribbles were made by my very own hands, so long ago that no memory of them remained in my mind.

I think that will be Green Bean's feeling when he reads conversations he once had with me.