Something Specific

Remember the part in "Saving Private Ryan" where Tom Hanks tells Matt Damon to remember home, but that you can't just remember home as a generic, you have to remember something specific? Hanks says he remembers his wife tending the roses in an old pair of his work gloves. Damon remembers his brother getting busy with Alice Jardin in the barn.... ***

If I were soldier today, dispatched to a remote part of the world, trying to will myself to fall asleep against the din of fighter jets, I wonder if I could find comfort in the somethings specific from home. If I could warm myself by the light of their vivid memory, or if they would just flash like distant air raids across my mind...

*** Hearing the crescendo of bleating cries from Baby Girl in the morning as the first light of dawn warms the magnolia walls of her room. I see that little expectant bobblehead peaking through the slats of her crib, and then there's that half-awake smile that reminds me every morning of who I am to this world.

Or my husband's voice reading a Sandra Boynton book in the voice of Sean Connery to Baby Girl for the 83rd time this weekend.

Or voicemails from my brother which take up half the bandwidth of my voicemail capacity, which completely recap everything that we would otherwise phone chat about, but which always end with, "Okay, well, talk to ya -"

Or asking Lovey Loverpants if he wants milk to drink with dinner, to which he sometimes responds, "No, thanks. I'll pass on grass." Which doesn't make sense but which makes me double over, and incapable of pouring my milk into the cup.

Or Baby Girl deciding half-way through her diaper change that lying on her back is overrated and then taking to her knees and scooting away without a care about the moose tracks she is leaving on the bed.... ***