1 post tagged “family”

I've taken you away for a week in the sunshine and although I thought I was doing it for me; rain-drenched and miserable from an English summer - I realise I've actually done it for you, like everything else nowadays.

I've watched you run into the mediterranean, shrieking with laughter and saltfaced, falling into the waves, losing your hat and coming up grinning with sand in your ears. I've shown you Italian tractors, ice-creams with plastic spoons, li-los in the shape of crocodiles, boats and pedalos, sand castles and swings.. Such wonders for a boy of a year and a half. You think everything is amazing. I think you're amazing - wondering again how we made you, so perfect and so here. I want to catch every moment and freeze it for later - you swimming in the baby pool with your arm-bands and frog-ring, grinning at Nonna as you dunk your plastic tractor again. You, dressed in white linen trousers and a blue checked shirt, like a Boden catalogue baby, blonde curls and blue eyes charming the Italian mamas and papas as you toddle down the main street at night, shrugging off hands and gazing in every direction at once.

Even at the table - where you look like an angel but act like a devil-child, arching your back, whingeing and shouting through over-tiredness and a surfeit of stimulation - when we have 'words' and I'm cross with you, I still think you're amazing.

Yesterday we floated out to sea, you clinging to me through the rubber rings holding you safe, and we just drifted - together and quiet, just watching the world and its wonders as I named things for you: boat, man, ball, aeroplane... Soon you'll be pushing me off, jumping off piers and into deep water on your own while I sit and watch as you take my heart with you, holding my breath. So for now I relish every second of you clinging to me, holding me as tight as I hold you. Next to my heart.