The other day I got a whiff of my six-year-old’s feet as he swang on our hammock, and I knew something drastic needed to be done. Summer will soon be upon us, and although I know I won’t always win the battle against crocs and smelly feet, this day I held out hope. So as the kids ate their drumstick ice cream cones on the back porch, I planned my attack. Ice cream eaten, faces smeared, I banned them from entering the house until called.
First came Sam, my all-tummy boy of three. Cheeky and bright, Sam is the epitome of “rascal.” I sat him on the counter, swung his feet into the white cast iron sink, and started scrubbing. He jabbered along happily, until I felt satisfied there was more dirt in the sink than on his feet and hoisted him down.
Next, Charlie Jean flitted into the room like the butterfly she is and, happy to be a help, presented her feet for inspection. While I scraped at the lines of dirt between her toes, she updated me on her plans to add some more flamingo friends to the one bird-like windchime she currently has in her garden. Finished with my work, she nodded approvingly. “Mommy, you ah a good scwubba,” she said, gliding over her r’s.
And then came Archie.
He evades me for the most part, this anomaly of myself. A mystery. Ever since Eric became sick, Archie and I have studied one another like strange species forced to share a habitat, eager to know each other’s ways for simple preservation. Only recently, these last six months, have I started to feel like I deserve the title of “Archie’s mom.” For so long it was him and Eric sharing their days together. It wasn’t until he was three that Archie even said the word “mommy.” Yeah, he was a quiet kid, but he never had the need, especially when his whole world revolved around saying “daddy.”
Once Archie got his feet into the sink, a dam within him broke and he chatted away. He started to ask me about summer and how many more days of school until his graduation. He asked me about his birthday (two months away) and if we could celebrate with cousins. This chattering surprised me. Maybe it’s because he is always drowned out by the enthusiasm of Charlie and the demands of Sam. Maybe it’s because I only have so much energy to listen. In this moment, though, I leaned a little closer.
“You know, Mommy, I don’t cry at chapel, if other kids are crying.”
“Why would kids cry at chapel?” I asked, thinking of his small school’s Wednesday morning tradition. I’ve always thought of his small Christian school as more reformed than pentecostal, led more with liturgy than the Spirit.
“Our principal says if we are sad, we can tell Jesus. But I just cry in my head because I don’t want to cry out loud.”
“Oh yeah? What do you cry about?”
“About Daddy.”
It’s so rare for Archie to bring up Eric, especially his death. Charlie is always the one that fills in this piece of our story for newcomers.
“I wish Daddy didn’t die, so he could still be here and see me ride my bike with no training wheels.”
“Mmhmm,” I mumbled, cautious to make any sudden movements of comments lest I scare away this talking boy.
“Or he could see me go to scouts and go fishing.”
Archie started to list his greatest life achievements–catching a chicken at his cousins’ house, using a pocket knife, climbing a tree with no help from Mommy–and I see the dirt on his feet as not just a testimony to his day but to the last three years we’ve walked together.
“So that’s what I tell Jesus.”
And in the great gaps of single parenting, in the chasms of loss that my children and I have experienced, here is where I find peace. That if my oldest child, this brave beautiful boy, must cry any other name than “Daddy,” I am grateful it is the name Jesus. Because even farther than the life I plan to live, Jesus will never leave him. And in all the growing pains I know we still have ahead of us, I would want him to lean on nothing less and no one else.
a scribble of jo 