The Pumpkins "Up High"!

It was two weeks ago tomorrow that my little fella walked in the door and did his Monday morning scan of the place. He is always observant, but on Mondays, after he has been away for the week end, he takes special care to stand still in one spot, just inside the family room and sort of...survey....everything. I watch his eyes, waiting to see what he is going to show me. I see his head tilt and his eyes change shape as they widen and narrow when he spies something new and then ponders whether he likes it or not. It's become a game,of sorts, that I play with the "unknowing him". He doesn't see me watching his every move as he is far too absorbed in his own little game of, "What did Mimmy change now?" On this particular Monday, his bright little eyes went right to the tall birdcage that perches on the second story niche to the left of the fireplace chimney. It's six feet in height and about eighteen inches wide with distressed white paint. The birdcage has actually, in spite of it's height, been unnoticeable until this day. Over the weekend, while he was home with his parents and I actually had TIME to be creative, I filled the cage with six of the "fake" pumpkins... (You know, the kind that you can buy at Michael's)... They sit stacked on top of each other, making a pumpkin column. Two of the pumpkins, the second and fourth in the stack, have smiling carved faces that light up. In front of the cage rests a super-sized pumpkin (twice the size of those inside the cage) with a huge lighted smile that glowed throughout the room on this early and still pretty dark morning! I watched him for the few seconds (seconds that seemed like hours) it took for him to find his words. His eyes literally sparkled with excitement and his whole body gave a little shudder as he raised his arm and pointed his finger to the caged pumpkins! "Ha-ha!! Ha! Up high! Mimmy!!! Pumpkins up high!" (Ha-ha was an out loud laugh!) "I know, Rett! Mimmy put those pumpkins up high for you to look at!" He did his classic hand-hit to the forehead as in complete disbelief. Then holding his head in both hands and laughing, exclaimed, "Oh gosh, Mimmy! Pumpkins up high! Mimmy! Haha!" A grandmother can catch a million things in a photo or a video... But this moment was just there, suspended in time. Too quick to catch and record and yet it will play over and over in my mind. He spent the next hour, taking me from room to room, showing me the things that I had done. I started to think that he thought they had just appeared as if by magic, because as he examined each little Fall or Halloween vignette he seemed to think he was showing me something for the first time. Something he thought I hadn't discovered yet. It didn't matter. His delight in the discovery and his eagerness to share it with me was far more enjoyable and gratifying than his knowing that "I" had done this, that "I" had created this for him. I wasn't sure how he thought these things appeared, but I was sure of his delight in his discoveries, and that was ALL that mattered. Isn't that WHY we create? Isn't that WHY we make our homes the way we do? Don't we do it to delight? Provide? Comfort? Inspire? Don't we do it to create that "nurturing nest" for those we love? Does it matter that a two year old knows that "we" did it? No!........it matters only that they have that space and place of love in which to grow. And so our day went on.........Every so often, he'd stop his running, jumping, car playing self long enough to check and see if the pumpkins were still there. It was when his GrandBob came home that I found out that he knew more than I thought he did. As GrandBob came in from the garage, Rett pulled him by the hand into the family room, pointed up at the "pumpkin cage" and with nothing short of glee proclaimed, "GrandBob!!! Up high! Pumpkins!! Up high! MIMMY DO IT!!!"