love – Amanda Salisbury

Fat lips should most definitely be celebrated.

-AS

Fat Lip

Originally posted on a 6s community, August 6, 2010 at 12:09pm

His face turned crimson and tears edged out of their prison as he ran around the corner of the house. Five-year-old humiliation is a supremely malignant condition, and he knew this even as he ran. Sure, it hurt when the over-sized plastic ball kissed his angel lips, sent fluid, warm metal across his teeth, and shunned the upheld over-sized plastic bat.

But the disgrace – well, that was more than any manling could suffer. His mother blithely gathered the instruments of his undoing, clutched as many hands as she dared, and guided the entire consort indoors, out of the view of sympathetic adult eyes that laugh without malice at memory rather than the present.

Once the door was latched, he hugged her, thanking her for rescuing him – though he will admit no such thing.

Who Could Argue with That?

I sometimes miss these days of very young boyisms, but a wise woman once told me to find something to enjoy in every phase. That’s the trick to living in the moment.

-AS

Who Could Argue With That?

Originally posted on a 6s community, June 13, 2011 at 12:21pm

Air rushes past my ears and rattles the leaves above us. Eldest clicks in time to the stick he drags along the concrete, while Third screeches “Bird, bird!”

Middling hears the clouds speaking, and I don’t discount his conversation. A weedeater winds its fierce bit of string; a truck idles in gassy fumes; somewhere, a dog yips up a storm of self-confidence; we christen a squirrel “Chitter” for the sound she makes at us from her loft in the pine.

I try to focus our effort at exploring the sounds of our neighborhood. As it happens, the children think they may cease to exist if they cannot see through closed eyes and cannot hear themselves through sealed lips; who could argue with that?