The Purple Bucket

It's not even 10pm and the baby is asleep...and all the kids...and the sick husband...and the helpful mom-in-law who has been working hard all day. All I hear right now is the soothing sound of night crickets and the peaceful chopping of helicopters overhead. It's enough to send me into my own dreams.

But first I wanted to get down this memory of my boy before it gets to be ten years from now and I've entirely forgotten that he used to do this. One of my favorite things to see right now is my overgrown four year old walking through our long backyard with a purple bucket bouncing against his thigh in search of frogs. After breakfast, in the middle of the day, in the evening, at bedtime, he turns his big, brown eyes - the same ones that made my heart jump seven years ago when I was hoping his Dad would think I was cute and funny and awesome - to me and asks, "Can I go look for fwogs?" And when he finds them he comes to the door and asks me to come and look at them and admire them and admire him, the fearless frog hunter. He likes to look through my nature book that has enough flowers, bugs, butterflies, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals to make a little boy's heart fly, and point out which frog he thinks he caught that day. In the last couple of days he has found the end of the rainbow in frog hunting. Underneath a shady spot in our garden he can be guaranteed to pick up two or three frogs any time he looks there. Yesterday he brought a bucket full of six frogs desperate to leap up the smooth purple walls they found themselves trapped by up to my eyes. His mind right now is completely caught up in frogs; he eats, thinks, speaks and even is willing to read about frogs. I wish I could trap the moment of him searching our garden with his purple bucket in a purple bucket of my own, to pick up and watch and smile over whenever I wanted to for the rest of my life. But I guess this post will have to do.