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Last night I watched my littlest fall asleep. He’d crawled into crisp white sheets still wearing his dusty play clothes. His hair smelled like dirt and grass and autumn leaves. I “tuck tucked” my way around his sleepy toddler body, pushing his blanket under his sides just the way he likes it. Just the way we’ve practiced for four years and two months.

 He stares straight ahead, past my face, at the square night-light on the wall. When we moved into this house, the first few days were a wreck because we didn’t have enough night-lights. He’d wake up and cry for us: “It’s too dark, It’s too dark, Dada.” He’d call for my husband first. This was new. I’d only just returned to work, and already he was calling for my husband first.

 I nudge my head into his sight line, blocking his nighttime night-light trance, and smile at him. He sighs and snuggles deeper. Ah good, the power of my love beams is still quite potent. (Working-mom myths be damned.) I lay my chest on his side and sniff his neck. I kiss his right ear, then his eye. Yes, right on his closed eye. I whisper, “Kiss the eyeball” as I do it, feeling satisfied at carrying this eye-kissing tradition over eleven years and four kids. That gets a smile.

 I sit back and watch him in his big-boy bottom bunk. His eyes flutter. They slowly close, then open a bit, teeter-tottering between here with me and Never-Never-Land. He looks like a frog. An almost irresistible urge to bite his cheek bubbles up in me, but I hold it between us, smiling super love beams at his tiny frame.

 I imagine seeing him now, for the first time. Who is he, really? This little boy I’ve just met. One that somebody or something said I could and should watch over, and feed, and trim his nails, and carry over my head when he’s tired and screamy. My finger traces each side of his eyebrows. His eyes stay closed. Whom will he love? How will he spend his Friday nights? What will he worry about when he’s alone for the first time?

 Yesterday I woke up early and went to the local market. A signature Berkeley guy (older hippie, beardy, chatty) saw the mini pumpkins filling my basket and asked if I had kids at home. We chatted about pluots and plum pie and arriving early to get the discounted bags of produce. Then he looked wistful and said his kids were 35 and 22. He just went to a concert in Europe with his 35-year-old. “So they’re still fun.” But he worried about his 22-year-old. About her being “too serious, getting stuck in a shitty job, having kids, and falling into a mediocre marriage like mine.”

 I felt around the navel oranges and picked out a few, nodding to signal I was listening, but fretting internally as he talked at me and the silent rainbow of vegetables. Still, I worried about the guy’s worries as I picked a head of butter lettuce and five pounds of yellow nectarines. I mulled over his marriage by the beet greens and unwieldy sprouts and swiftly defended my own by the just-so rows of tart green apples and crisp Red Delicious. Once in line, I changed my mind and went back for another speckled yellow heirloom tomato and a loaf of fresh bread in a white paper bag. Toast, we’ll have butter on toast with sliced tomato and Malden sea salt and pepper. And maybe bacon. And a vinegar-y salad.

 Tonight I toasted that wheat loaf and then buttered it with too much butter. My husband cooked thick slices of salty bacon. I slapped tomatoes on top and we all stood in the kitchen munching and chatting about Halloween movies, interrupted by cries for more bacon, more toast, cups of milk, and a different dinner. The boys cleared their plates, I pinched my husband’s bum, and everyone left for baths and sleepy bedtime reading. 

Let’s do this again sometime. These messy sandwich dinners and crumby counters and sticky pitter-patter feet. Let’s do this again. Maybe tomorrow at six? No, six in the morning. For four messy bedheads and lopsided backpacks and forgotten multivitamins and morning breath. It’ll be good, maybe great. But it may just be. Is that okay? How does that sound?

 Okay, I’ll be there.

Koseli Cummings (she/her) is a content designer based in Berkeley with a passion for long walks, vintage miniatures, and really good bad reality TV.