Benjamin Penguin

About two summers ago now, Adam and I took a little mini vacation prior to the start of my school year. It was a wonderful weekend. We didn’t do anything in particular. We took a lot of walks and dined and talked and held hands and watched TV. None of what we did was out of the ordinary, but all of it was remarkably enjoyable. And I do mean remarkably so.  I really adore Adam, so the two of us lolling about for a week is quite heavenly to me. And the weather was gorgeous – it was almost obscene the way the sun would shine so brightly every morning, the dusk sky would be colored with beautiful purplish-pink hues and the breeze from the lake would draw up the earthy smells of the beach and the trees and the dozens of little bonfires that continually dot the lake’s shore. I simply had a terrific time. Of course, I was also pregnant with Benjamin at the time, having just found out that he was, in fact, a little boy. During the slow days, I would allow myself the most indulgent daydreams of chasing after a curly-haired little moppet, for I was convinced that he would be so. During my nights I would lay on the couch with my hand on my belly and will him to kick and wiggle for me so that I could feel him deep inside my belly. And as a tangent here – the first time I really felt him kick was when I was in the middle of my PhD qualifying exams. I do believe, quite intensely, that the reason I did so well on my exams was because I was not nervous and the reason that I was not nervous was because I was too amazed with the private little dance going on in my belly. I can scarcely believe I finished the exams at all because I was reeling in the excitement of my little, secret experience.  But, I digress.

I’ve never really thought about trying to recreate that weekend. I am a woman content with savoring cherished memories. I return to them again and again, as if my memory reserves were some sort of buffet table of emotional nourishment. I was happy to have experienced it and happy to add it to my collection of memories. This past weekend, when Ben and Adam and I traveled to the same place for our brief sojourn, there was an air of familiarity about the experience. True, we were visiting the same little towns we would always visit, grabbing ice cream at the same little spot we always stopped at and found the millions of cousins and nephews of past grains of sand wedged between our toes on that very same beach that we’ve walked along a dozen times before. That was familiar, but that was not the familiar that I was feeling. What I felt was something oddly warm and comforting. It was, I think, elation. It was that known, welcome feeling of joy that signals to me, “Right now, Miss Thing, you are on top of the world. And it is good.”

I would have feelings of happiness regardless. I am, by nature, a pretty happy person. But there is something that happens when I am with Ben and Adam that causes my head to swim. In Ben, I see Adam. I see his goofy charms and his wide smile and bright eyes and through Ben, Adam seems all the more endearing. In Adam, I see Ben. I see his curious mixture of seriousness and playfulness and through Adam, Ben seems all the more amazing. Apart, I am always in silent awe of how wonderful they both are, but together, when they combine, intertwine, interact and groove to a wonderful father-son beat of give and take, of movement and rest, I am utterly and completely speechless at times.

Do they know how much I adore them? How often I stop during the course of my day and feel gratitude for having them in my life? For giving me the gift of a weekend like last weekend?