A Mother's Memories

The large picture window is my portal these days. As I look out, I wonder how long before he gets home. It would be soon now. I know because I can hear the barn owl beginning his nightly serenade. Sounds like fingernails on a chalkboard. Not like the lovely call of the Great Horned Owls hooting to each other across the frozen fields I heard when I was young. As I listen to its shrill screams and shrieks I remember little Frank was afraid of the owls. He wouldn’t let us crack his windows open in summer, afraid the owls would come into his room and carry him away.

Little Frank loved kindergarten. He told me he wanted to go for a full day! Half day school was for babies, and he wasn’t a baby. I asked him where he got that idea!? He said the older boys on the bus told him “only babies go home for lunch!” But he’s my baby….always will be. Seems only yesterday he was grinding crayon fragments in his high chair. Frank called it his Hemingway phase. Covering rheims of white and green striped computer printer paper with his scrawl. But as winter changed into spring, so did he, morphing into the fastest volunteer firefighter in the world - racing up and down the driveway in his red peddle car fire engine. Frank even ran the hose along the edge of the concrete so little Frank could hook it to the side of the engine where it curled and writhed behind him. Up and down, back and forth, over and over and over again, as only little boys can do.

Since starting kindergarten, his obsessions changed again. Now he wants to be a teacher like Miss Todd. Writing on his toy chalkboard, like Miss Todd. Wearing his toy watch on his wrist, like Miss Todd. Laying his sandwich and cookies out on his napkin at lunch, like Mis Todd at snack time.

His birthday is coming up. I wonder what he would want? A bike? At 6 I think most little boys want a bike. Maybe blue, with a white seat, white rubber handle bar handles, and white shipping. Wouldn’t it be fun to watch Frank teach him to ride. He always wanted a boy and little Frank looks just like him at that age.

How would he come home today? Skipping from the bus stop down the street with his friend, Jason? Riding the bus all the way to our stop and bounding out to jump over the flowerbed dropping his papers and pencil box? Will his hair be slicked down, or more likely sticking up like a rooster comb? Will the knees of his britches be intact, or worn ragged from running down the hallway dropping to his knees and tobogganing the rest of the way? Something I begged him to stop doing? Or maybe, he will get off the bus holding hands with that little Sullivan girl down the street - so cute!

I startle as the barn owl flies between the porch post and the window to reach the old oak. Oh the time! I better start Franks dinner and pull the drapes, yes I think, pull the drapes; so he doesn’t know I have been looking out the window again. Watching for little Frank to come home from school again. He says he doesn’t want to see me looking. That it makes him sad. That he is worried about me, and that if I don’t stop looking we may have to move away from all these memories. But how can a mother stop looking?