“Mom, can I cut off one of the straps to my backpack with a scissors when I get home from school?” Jordan asked me somewhere between eating waffles for breakfast and brushing his teeth.
“We’ll see, Jordan.”
“You mean, you’ll think about it?” my son asked.
“Yes, I’ll think about it.”
“No, Mom! Thinking about it means ‘no’!” Jordan cried.
“It doesn’t always mean no,” I said…although I couldn’t remember the last time I said I’ll think about
it and meant yes. “Why do you need to cut off a strap?”
“So I can have a backpack just like Jason…he wears one across his shoulder to school,” Jordan replied.
“Gotcha. Did you know your dad had a backpack like that?”
“Where is it?” Jordan asked.
“In my closet. You can get it after school and use it for your sleep over at your uncle’s tonight,” I told him.
That was incentive enough to make it through a Friday.
Maddi and I dropped Jordan off at school and then stopped at the bank. Climbing out of the truck my cell phone fell on the ground, ending up in five pieces. Sighing, which I seem to be doing a lot of these days, I collected the parts wishing I didn’t have to deal with anything broken today.
“Mom, call Uncle Mark. He’s a fixer guy,” Maddi told me, “since Daddy isn’t alive.”
“Yep,” was about all I could say.
“Or Uncle Nick,” Maddi said, “Cuz he’s a guy and only guys can fix things right, Mom?”
“Guys are handy that way,” I said. Preoccupied, I kept working to put the pieces back in the spots that seemed to make most sense certain my deductive reasoning was really just guessing.
I snapped the back of the phone together with the shiny black cover and motioned Maddi towards the entrance of the bank. Before slipping the phone into my purse I noticed it was lighting up and within a few seconds my screensaver photo appeared. I held the phone towards Maddi to let her see.
One of the most beautiful things about this child is her unrestrained expressions. Her jaw dropped to make a perfect oval shape like a decorated Easter egg. The look gave me expanded into her eyes and I could see both amazement and admiration written in her response, “YES!”
I grinned back at her, “Mommies can be fixers, too!”
The first thing Jordan did after school was head to my closet in search of the one-strap backpack.
Following him I said, “Hey, I wanted to ask you about your day.”
“You can ask me in the closet,” he replied.
Sitting in my walk-in closet he examined the pack.
It was exactly what he wanted; probably even better knowing it had been his dad’s.
"Jordan," I asked, "if you could tell your dad anything right now what would it be."
Without hesitation Jordan said, "That I love him."
He packed the bag for the sleepover and headed outside to play with his friend, Kyle.
I overheard the boys’ conversation on our deck.
“Kyle, you have to love your mom,” Jordan said, “Do you love your mom?”
“Yes,” Kyle said.
“Okay,” Jordan told him, “Because we have to love our moms…cuz they always love us.”
