I roll out of bed with surprise at how bright the bedroom is. Not yet seven, and the light already sings with the warmth of spring, though the equinox is still a few weeks away. The weather app tells me it’s in the low forties, though later it will be in the mid-seventies. Six years in the south and I’m still not used to how early each year the air grows warm and chases away the chill of winter.
By the time I make it to the family room, my son has eaten. I’m always surprised when I find the empty wrappers for his muffins and milk, when a year ago I had to help him choose and prepare his preferred morning meal. His belly full, he now sits, perched between the windows on the couch that lines the front wall of the house. He prefers the other couch, the one that sits perpendicular to where he currently sits. He’s deemed it “the comfy couch,” and on any given day, I will find four of our six cats sleeping in a neat row along the comfy couch, nestled between the cushions.
“Mama?” He says, glancing up from the tablet resting on his knees, “It’s so bright outside. And inside. Can I wear sunglasses in the house?”
His preferred couch sits directly in the rising morning light, glowing as bright as if I’d shone a spotlight on it. The sun peeks above the rooftops of the buildings across the street, bathing the family room in bright light.
I laugh and move to turn the blinds up to dim the morning brightness.
“You can, but it may be better to wear them for our walk to school,” I say. He grimaces before standing up and swiping his long, sand-colored hair away from his eyes.
“What if I wear them for our walk to school?” His grin is mischievous. I pause, taking him in. The sunlight glints off his hair and his azure eyes sparkle with glee. He’s grown so much since school started in August, and I want to notice all the ways he is different and bigger. He can choose his clothes and dress himself with ease. He slips on his backpack every morning as though he’s been using one for years, not just a few months. I still remember, as he rustles his hair and pulls on his shoes, how the sunlight illuminated his hair when he was a newborn, ringing his hair in a halo of gold fuzz.
“Sure!” I say. I grab my sunglasses and his, and we step outside. The air is warmer than I anticipated. My weather app insisted it was in the mid-forties, but this feels closer to the mid-fifties. I pause and toss my jacket back inside. It is definitely already too warm for fleece.
As I lock the door, I stop just long enough to take in the sound of birds chirping around me. I don’t remember hearing birds this early in the year when we still lived in Ohio, but I could be wrong. It wasn’t a sound I made an effort to listen for until I was a mother and realized just how much my son loved birds. He was overjoyed last summer when a bird decided to make her nest just outside our front door.
“Race you Mom!” My son calls gleefully. His footsteps pitter-pat down the sidewalk as I chase him to the corner. He giggles and shrieks the whole way to the crosswalk a few houses down. There, he stops and waits for me to catch up.
“You did not catch me!” He slips his hand into mine. Soft and small, I am always amazed at how big his hands are compared to how tiny they were when he was a baby. I’m also still surprised at how tiny his hands are still. Six-year-olds are still so little, even as they are becoming the big kids they long to be.
“I am going to have so much fun on my field trip!” He chirps, swinging my arm back-and-forth. “Have I ever ridden a school bus before?” One eyebrow raises up at me while we wait for the crossing guard.
“I don’t think you have, but you did sit in one a long time ago,” I answer as we cross. The last time he sat in a bus was at a touch-a-truck event when he was a toddler. He clung to me and his father like cling wrap, terrified of the size and sounds of the bus around him.
“Oh.” He furrows his brow and for just a second, looks just like my husband. “What are buses like?”
I pause a big longer than normal. The last time I rode a school bus was eight or nine years ago, as the transport to the finish line of a relay race I ran. I remember it being sticky and humid outside the bus and inside the bus, but being grateful for a seat after seven miles of sticky-wet race.
“Well,” I start, “they’re big. With big seats. They rumble and you may feel like it’s extra bouncy. But they’re fun to ride, too. I think you’ll have fun!”
We are now standing outside the school entry. He wraps me up into a hug and presses his face into my stomach.
“I can’t wait to go on this field trip! But I’ll miss you!” He sounds concerned and excited. I smile at him and wrap him up in another hug.
“I’ll miss you too, but I cannot wait to hear all about your day!” I handhim his lunch bag.
“It will be fun!” He’s determined.
He gives me a fist bump before marching inside the school. So big and so little, all at the same time.
As I walk home, I breathe in the smells of fresh greenery and enjoy the warm sun on my shoulders.
I stand on the front porch before I unlock the door and listen to the birds sing and chirp back and forth. Then I open the door and slip inside.
Bright and warm, I thought, a perfect day for a first field trip and a first bus ride for my big-and-little-kid.
