My boy

Jude

Mike

Emily

My boy's eyes are blue--of the intensity of pure things. Sparkling. They are his dad's. 27 years younger.

My boy's eyelashes extend for days, long and straight, not even a hint of a curl. I think of them like the flatness of North Dakota.

My boy has a cleft in his chin. My cleft.

My boy has a pensive face and a quizzical brow. Some might say he scowls, but I think he's just curious. Full of observation. Perhaps a little skeptical.

My boy has a pouty lip to slay the masses, bend them pathetically, helplessly to his will. I capitulate every time--scoop him up into a too-tight embrace.

My boy has a mischevious smile. A melting, mischevious smile. Mike and I go to great, ridiculous lengths to coax it out.

My boy is strong. Although his head still bobs as we hold him, standing, by his hips, his legs hold him up--wee, steel, stork legs.

He has his father's flat feet, his mother's glower, his father's hint of auburn, his mother's eye shape, his father's lucious lips, his mother's detached earlobes.

My boy captivates me countless times a day--he coos and sputters and drools and I ask for more. "Tell me," I say, "Tell me more."

My boy sleeps with his small fists cradling his head. The small vulnerability of his sleep is endlessly disarming--the thin, purple paper of his eyelids.

My boy has fuzzy, wispy hair, a halo of strawberry fuzz on his near bald head. It poofs out deliciously after his bath.

I kiss my boy hundreds of times a day--push my lips into the chubiness of his baby cheeks, the top of his head, bury myself in the small arc of his neck, into his palms, his feet, his button nose. It's compulsion--an outflowing of my motherhood to his sonhood, to his babyhood, to his mineness.

I take these small moments and tuck them into my new heart--the one that burst into being as my body spread wide as eternity--the one with pockets to hold his many small, unintentional gifts. Small tremors of love still stretch it, that heart, wider and wider--an expanse of warm space to nestle every sweetness, every angle, every moment of my boy, my Jude, my tender, little babe.