15 minutes

For the past six months, I've been busier than ever. I started and finished student teaching second grade, finished my masters and started teaching 5th grade.

Teaching second grade was a dream. I loved my students, they loved me. They gave me beautifully decorated construction paper cards and they brought me flowers.

On the other hand, my fifth graders despise my existence and liken my role as their teacher as a dictator who hands out homework, keeps them busy with classwork and  oh, makes them mind their manners and abide by the rules.

Plain and simple, they hate me. That I'm sure of because they tell me so when they aren't calling me "Ms. Garbage".

But, while it might seem like I should have thrown myself a pity party over the Christmas break, I didn't. Even though I really desperately wanted to.

Instead, I reverted back to my stay at home mom days, boy do I miss those, and tried to soak in as much time as I could with this guy.

Today, for the first time in such as long time, Ham fell asleep in my arms during nap time. It was a miracle because neither one of us can find a comfortable position in the rocking chair anymore. We've finally outgrown it, which makes me really sad.


But that's the territory we're embarking on now, the toddler years.

These days, I don't have the lengthy rocking chair sessions I use to when Ham was a baby. Now bedtime is much different.

It always starts by reading Ham his usual favorites, Otis, Otis and the Tornado, Are You My Mother? and Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

He sips on his milk and makes the faces he's sees in the stories. If Goldilocks yawns, then he stretches his arms out and yawns with her, which in turn makes me really yawn.

And when we are done, Ham says "The N (End)", I turn the lights out and sit him in my lap and we spend the next 15 minutes in the dark talking.

If you jip Ham out of these 15 minutes of quality time, he is sure to cry. If you abide by it, he gets into bed fifteen minutes later with no fuss and asks for his plastic cars to sleep with.

I don't mind it though because these are the best 15 minutes of my life.

On days when the 5th graders have torn my ego to shreds. On days where I've yelled and screamed and called parents that don't care. On days where the grades do not reflect the time I spent teaching, I have these 15 minutes to look forward to.

A time when all is quiet and all is still in the house, except for the sound of the rocking chair creaking and Ham leaning in and whispering "What's Zat (That)?" to every creak he hears.

Sometimes he sit in my lap, facing me and he pretends to get dizzy from all the rocking. He says "Wa-Oh" and puts his arms out to balance himself. Sometimes he shakes his straight blond hair just to see it schwoosh from side to side. And other days, he examines my face for "boo boo's", which there aren't any, but he kisses them anyway and rubs my face softly with his hands. He reminds me that I have eyes and that he has eyes and we sing songs we made up about the moon. Then we check outside his window to see if the moon is out there, but we never see it.

Then it is time to lay him down. I lower him into the crib and he reminds me that his cars are not there, I tell him I'll be right back and I rummage through the house searching high and low for them. When I get back I hand him the cars I found, he tells me, "Dank Q" and he leans in to give me a goodnight kiss.

And as I creep out of his room and bring the door to a crack, I am thankful for our one-on-one time no matter how short it might seem in these toddler times.

Bob's Orchid Tree

The sun was setting down past the trees and there was still a little time to squeeze in a walk around the neighborhood.

Ham was growing frustrated with one of his toys and I suggested he take a drive in his car to cool off for a bit.

"Tay (Okay)" he replied and stood by the door.

Gripping his arm with one hand and lugging his plastic car down the steps, we squeezed through the potted plants and down the steps.

I fastened my makeshift seatbelt on him, a polka-dotted blue ribbon that I'm sure will embarrass the heck out of him one day.

The car rumbled down the sidewalk so loudly that I often wonder if people can hear us in their houses.

We headed straight past our usual spot.

I noticed one of our neighbors was out and we stopped for a moment to talk to her. As we waved goodbye, I motioned across the street and mentioned we were headed to our favorite tree. I always start our walk by giving Ham a leaf off the tree.

Once we had a good leaf or one that Ham thought was good enough, we headed around the corner past this super prickly plant that causes us to veer onto the road for a bit.

That's when we bumped into Bob.

Bob came running around the house waving his hands as if to tell us to stop.

I glanced down at Hammy holding his leaf, the leaf we technically stole off of Bob's tree.

I grimaced at little, thinking that maybe Bob wouldn't appreciate that at all.

"Watch out for that prickly bush on the corner!" he exclaimed. He motioned over to the bush that sits in the corner of his lot, the one that Ham and I artfully dodge every time we turn the corner. It's leaves could take your eyes out if you weren't paying any attention. 

"Oh thanks, we'll be careful."

And while I had Bob's attention I thought I might just bring up that beautiful tree in his yard.

It turns out Bob had a lot to say about it.

"It's an Orchid Tree. It's from the Carrribean." He said. "My mother was visiting one of the islands and fell in love with the trees there. She got her hands on some of the seeds and tried to bring them back into the country with her"

He shook his head remembering her story, "But they won't let her in with the seeds. They said she had to throw them away, that they wouldn't allow her to bring a plant or seeds into the U.S."

He smirked a little bit before saying, "So my mom went to the bathroom and put two seeds in her brassiere and walked right back through the line."

He motioned over to the tree. "This tree is a product of one of those seeds. The other seed didn't make it."

I was amazed. I told him I was growing a tree from a sapling I took from the tree over at my house in a pot, until I could figure out what to do with it.

He lit up as a thought crossed his mind and asked us to sit tight for a moment because he was going to run back into his house for a moment.

Ham and I waited outside. Ham was growing impatient. He pulled at the ribbon around his waste and arched his back, whining and squealing.  I tugged the ribbon loose and lifted him into my arms, bouncing him like he was an infant. He didn't appreciate it. I tried my best to keep him entertained while we waited.  Plus, if Bob turned out to be a crazy person and I had to retreat, I could abandon Ham's car and make a run for it.

Before long, Bob was back with old medicine bottles in his hand. I started to get nervous. He handed one over to me. I held it up in the light and recognized the butterbean shaped seeds of the Orchid tree. He handed over another medicine bottle of them. Inside each there appeared to be handwritten instructions.

"I made these for anyone who was interested in growing one. I wrote down instructions on how to care for it."

Amazing.

"Wow. Thanks....If the one that I'm growing doesn't work out, I have back ups" I shook the medicine bottle in the air as if it would tell me how many were in there. I imagined our future house surrounded by Orchid trees.

Bob went on to tell me more of the story, but Ham wouldn't stand for it. Ham crawled out of my arms and started pushing his car towards the direction of our house.

"Well I need to get him home," I said while trying to keep Ham from veering his car into the street.

I apologized to Bob, but he wasn't worried about it. I thanked him for the seeds and for the story.

I told him that Ham and I loved that tree, that it was the highlight of our walks.

We smiled and waved goodbyes.

And Ham and I headed back to our house with two medicine jars filled to the brim with Orchid tree seeds.