Just a Minute

"Will you stay with me a minute?"

This from Emma Grace, lying abed, thumb in mouth so that her words are simultaneously squeezed and stretched and sounding like something I am incapable of reproducing in print.

"Mommy, will you stay with me a minute?"

This, after I have already helped with the getting-ready-for-bed. After I have read the story (or two) and sung the song. This, when I have hours of work yet ahead of me before I can lie, as she is now doing, in a soft, horizontal space in the near-dark.

I am So Tired.

"Will you stay with me a minute?"

William used to ask the same thing of us-- the Same Exact Thing. Just asking for a minute, not much time. He used to ask that of us when he was four and five. He doesn't ask for that any more.

The other morning I thought I'd clean out my purse. It was a half-hearted effort. There was one drifting receipt. There was my almost-empty water bottle that was Leaking Everywhere. And there were three matchbox cars, all of them souped up and terrifying: a sparkly blue convertible with navy flames on its hood and Fabulously Oversized wheels; a sparkly white number, box-shaped, with fins, that bears some kind of silver engine-like construction on its hood and "Trax Aces 16" in red on its side; and a sparkly purple convertible with orange and yellow flames licking its sides and hood and-- Horrors!-- a skull and bones painted on it besides.

I removed all of these from my purse.

I don't remember why the cars were in there. Well, there is an obvious answer: I put them there for Everett, or he asked me to put them there, when we were going someplace he might want them, somewhere that might require Waiting, and Quiet, and Subdued Behavior.

Matchbox cars can be excellent for this.

But he never used the Matchbox cars on this outing, and I can't say why. Too busy, perhaps. Too much going on. Maybe that day he found something else to do.He doesn't play with Matchbox cars so much these days, anyway.I have carried Matchbox cars in my purse Countless Times. And it is conceivable that I will carry them many more times before I'm done.

But I had the thought, when I cleaned my purse, that this could be the Last Time I remove Everett's Matchbox cars from my purse. It very well could be. Who knows? He is seven and a half, after all.

"Mommy, will you stay with me a minute?"

Yes, by all means yes, I will stay with you a minute. Maybe more. And I might hum to you, or sing you Yet Another Song, and stroke that amazing hair away from your face.

Yes I will. And thank you for asking.