A Bed Covered With Things Soft and Pink

Most days when I come home from work, the whole family is in the car port to welcome me home. Rarely, do they have pants on. Most days, Pete’s diaper is full and hanging from his crotch like a cow’s udder as he runs around the yard, blissfully unaware. Every day, Sam asks if we got any packages.

Most days the mail does come, we do get packages. Often they are for him. This close to Christmas we have been getting a lot of packages. The only thing is most of them are Christmas presents that he can’t open right there on the spot as he usually does. So, I’ve resorted to having to tell him no packages have come, even if they have, in order to avoid having to explain to him that he can’t open them then and there and has to wait until Christmas. Of course, then I have to watch his shoulders slump in visible disappointment as he trudges away. Hopefully, come Christmas morning, it will all be worth it. I think it will.

After the boys go to bed, I take the garbage out. On the way back to the house, I stop at the car and secretly bring the packages in. We’ve been hiding the boys’ Christmas presents in the guest room, under the bed and in almost plain sight in the closet. A towel covers the end of a giant ‘Thomas the Tank Engine Race from Rumble Mountain’ box that Ma and Grandad sent, because it is sticking out from under the end of the bed. I flick the lights on and hide more packages under the bed.

I pause to look at what’s on top of the bed. The entire queen-sized mattress is covered with things both soft and pink. Every shade of pink imaginable. Tiny pink skirts and pink onesies and pink leggings. There’s even a pink bathing suit. It is a tangible reminder of what—no, who—is coming. And I cannot even imagine what it will be like to have a tiny (“Small, small, small, teeny, weeny, weeny,” as Cranky Crane would teasingly say to Thomas) girl in my arms. Or what it will be like to bounce a tiny girl on top of the water in the swimming pool in her pink bathing suit. I can’t even imagine what she will look like. Like Elise, I hope. I thought my life incredibly blessed before….?!

I touch them and they are soft and perfect…and so small. It reminds me that my life is about to completely change yet again. And that is a good thing.