simple present tense

The kids are watching the preview for Toy Story 3 (Andy goes to college) and I'm tearing up. Somebody please.  Stop personifying kids toys and making my heart ache over these fleeting moments of little pleasures.  It’s a present tense nostalgia.  It's the fear of missing it. My friend Mary said she was so happy at her son’s high school graduation while all the other moms cried, she was really celebrating his accomplishments without regrets.  She just delights in the simple present tense.  I have so much to delight in our simple present tense too.  Like 20 people eating homemade missionary pizza in our house on Friday night, watching Toy Story.

I usually think of our man-cub as more like Buzz Light-Year than Andy, the boy that grows up.   But he is changing.  People do that, you know?  He went and turned six this week. 

I wasn’t planning this to be any big deal.  In fact, I wasn’t planning much celebration because I got lost under the stress of waiting for a work permit to come through for Daktari, which it did.  Hallelujah and happy birthday to us from the Government of Kenya! Thankfully we live in a mission community that is somewhat like living in a yellow submarine and a friend offered to plan a party for us to have together with their son turning 2 years old.  It was quoted as being “An awesome birthday party” too.

Missionary kid birthday parties are so great and so simple.  No Pintrest pressure to perform, no need to collect clout with cute cupcake presentation, no pressure on kids even to give presents really.  Mostly we dig in our little closets for something that would be a nice up-cycled gift, or maybe find something local like a stone carved animal or goat skin drum.  The little things really mean a lot to us at six. 

We don't mind at all if you wear tie dye and plaid on the same day. In Africa you are judged not by the color of clothes you wear, but by the content of your character. 

Man-cub, you are my big Kindergartener who can bound out the kitchen door at lightning speed yelling to the world “I love you mom!” as you take yourself to school every morning.  Or to infinity and beyond, whichever.

There are little joys we share here like a dad coming home for lunch every day to take an intermission from the dramatic realities of intensive care medicine in rural sub-Saharan Africa.  You are starting to get it a little at a time.  And when we see you show compassion in your own way to your kittens or the neighbor kids, my heart wells up to overflow.  It's in the here and now for you too.

You beg for tickle time and you love it even though you let me in on your secret the other day about losing your ticklishness. But we both pretend it never happened cause I can’t handle that kind of change so suddenly.  Let’s just enjoy you today.

Just a simple little five years of present tense moments have gone by building for us the two best accomplishments of my life.  You and your little sis. You make me proud.

And now you are six.