you siwwy

We were in the kitchen, just us two,
        a strange moment when the other three were off making shenanigans elsewhere,
    or maybe they were actually playing quietly.
He was telling me a story,
    and for a moment, it was just like old times,
              like I'd never left,
        like we could just go back to the way things were.
Everything was just the same,
      his snapping blue eyes,
    his laugh,
         the baby teeth between his smeary lips.
I was just smiling to myself,
   reassuring my soul that things will never really change,
 when it happened.

He opened his mouth,
     and an L slipped out cleanly,
   over his tongue and between his lips,
          before either of us knew it.

He kept talking,
      totally unaware that he had just smashed open my heart.
  In a moment,
       in that L,
     I knew things were always going to change.
               I knew he would grow up,
            stop going to bed at dark time,
          stop calling me siwwy Katie! when I made a mistake,
        stop chuckling over Mrs. Gwidden's stories,
      stop singing the Five Wittle Fishies song whenever I told him it was my favorite,
     stop calling his pretend best friend Jame.
 Instead, I knew with certainty,
       he would become a big man,
                     taller than his daddy,
                  but just as good;
                         fairer than his mama,
                     but just as hilarious;
             smart as a whip,
                        but still kind and generous.
       I knew he would be a daddy, someday,
                   that I would coo over photos of babies just as blue-eyed,
                 and just as beautiful,
                               as he was.
But I knew, also,
      that the baby I loved so much
                   the toddler I snuggled and tickled,
                                    the little boy I read books with,
  were gone . . .
         and in their place,
     stood a little man
                   who said his L's perfectly.