Saturdays
Sunday, February 08, 2009
Thank you all for the worm advice. S has since passed a few more. (I’ll spare you the details this time.) I checked out a few sites and verified that they ARE definitely roundworms. The medicine I gave her a few days back was Albendazole and it’s obviously working so I think I’ll just wait it out from here and keep her eating as much fresh fruit as possible.
My friends who came to visit left some coffee here, so yesterday I made some for myself and the staff and we all went into “crazy cleaning mode.” Saturdays around here are always for cleaning up, bathing, washing clothes and getting ready for the school week (which starts on Sunday for us,) but I think the combination of the coffee and the worm incidents caused me to turn things up a notch. We stripped all the beds and curtains, opened up all the windows, put the mattresses out in the sun, and deep cleaned the kitchen. The kids were in charge of cleaning up the yard and organizing their rooms.
I love Saturdays here. This may seem strange but I actually enjoy vigorously scrubbing at the boys’ black soiled feet, and lathering up a washcloth to clean their dirt-streaked necks. I love watching their faces as they jump into the freezing cold shower and hearing their shrieks as they playfully pour jugs of water over each other. Afterward, when they’re all clean and fresh and soft, I comb their hair and sniff in all that sweetness, knowing very well it won’t last and that in a few minutes time they’ll be back in the dirt wrestling each other, and sweating and searching for bugs and worms and tadpoles. I know it's just a matter of hours before the fresh soap smell is replaced with the salty grungy dirty-little-boy smell, which I love just the same, but don’t particularly savor as much.
Yesterday as we sat in the sun, cleaning ears, trimming fingernails and putting Burt’s Bees on dry cracked feet I thought about how soon these little boys will be all grown up– how the day will come when they won’t let me bathe them, or trim their fingernails, or pick out their clothes for them. I remember a few summers back at one of my summer babysitting jobs a mother and I were sitting by the side of the pool under an umbrella watching her children play, and giggle and splash each other. She looked at me with tears in her eyes and said, “sometimes I wish I could just stop time.” I was a teenager at the time and her words didn’t really mean much to me that day but since then I found myself remembering them and understanding exactly what she meant. There really are moments that are so perfect and precious and sweet that you want to freeze them just the way they are. I wish that I could bottle up all the innocence of these children and save it forever.