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Tig hates having his head scratched. I don't think it's vanity about his coif. I think it just messes with his sense of order. The feeling of his fairly stiff hair getting put out of it's regular place screws with his chi. His ontological experience. His groove. Yo?
Mongo doesn't mind it a bit. In fact he seems to cherish it. He has very long straight hair. It's finer than Tigger's. Since he was just a few weeks old, I've noticed that gentle fingers on his face, across his eye-brows, down the bridge of his nose, and through his hair brings him peace. Tigger will fidgit and lash out trying to restrain whatever is trespassing on his person. Mongo, well, he just looks out into space and sucks on his thumb.
Well, I love that. It is a burden to me that Tigger dislikes it, because touch is one of the ways that I enjoy showing the boys my affection for them. So I just have to find a different, more meaning-filled way to do it with Tigg. But for Mongo...well, he gets a lot of foot rubs and head scratches.
I was laying next to him in his bed last night. Laying down with Mongo is kind of a commitment. You see, it's on the floor. Now, I suppose you're saying, "Well, it wouldn't stay up on the wall, would it?" but I mean only that there is neither frame nor box-spring beneath it the mattress. Just floor. So it's far enough down that you don't just go down, and pop right back up. You know? Yeah, maybe you do...
Well, I was feeling especially maternal and laid down with Mongo to scratch his head for awhile. The roman shades were down, but it was still very light outside so the room was far from dark. Just soft, filtered light. I ran my fingers over the top of his head, and across the side, over and over and over again. He just laid there, blankie and thumb in their traditional locations, as he blinked up at the ceiling. He eventually pulled his shirt up, and I began making circles on his chest and tummy with the flat of my hand. All this time, I was looking at my 2 year old son, and loving him, and thinking of my dad, dead 4 years to the week, and missing him...
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I remember laying in my bed, being five, eight, ten, twelve years old, and loving when my dad would come in and sit with me. I don't remember any conversations, but I'll never forget how rough his hands felt on my soft skin. Not ever.
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Yesterday I was trying to install a ceiling fan & light in the boys' room. Grr. Don't know how, but the fan worked, and not the light? What? There's one switch (it's a dual switch)! One hot wire in, two hot wires out? Should work. But it doesn't. Still. Anyways, I had some floor boards up in the attic so that I could put the hot wire for the fan in (previously there was only a light so I needed two hot wires instead of just one) and the door to the attic had been open and closed several times during the day, which awoke a new interest in the attic in Tigger. Well, in the three or four minutes that I spent digging through a box of switches in my garage, he managed to get his 4 year old self up there and into a pile of blown-in insulation from 50 years ago that was piled up in a far corner of the attic. I caught him coming back down the stairs. He was covered, head to toe, with soft grey lint. "Attic dust," I called it.
I was beyond angry. I'd told him prior to this not to go up there, that there were floor boards missing in places, nails sticking out of other places, NO floor in yet other places, and LOTS of "attic dust" which was bad for his lungs.
He looked at me, forlorn, resplendent in his repentance, and with giant precious moments eyes, and slumped shoulders, looked at me and asked, "What are lungs?"
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