crocodile clouds and memory musing

Baby sister told me that the clouds look like a crocodile on the way to work today.  I looked up into the sky and saw that indeed, a giant crocodile mouth was etched in the sky, jaws ready for a giant <snap>.  I hope I remember how serious she looked at me when she said this, almost clinical—like what she was saying was a material fact in a legal proceeding.  I can see her face in my mind’s eye as I write this—and realized that I had almost forgotten all about it, until I set my thoughts to the keyboard just now.

Prior to the crocodile sighting, the sky was dark, we leave in darkness these days, and dropping off big sister first at school before climbing the mountain into town--big sister gave her baby sister a kiss before heading into school.  Then baby sister cried because she told me she didn’t "feel" sister's kiss—and she wanted another one.  Big sis then blew a kiss and off she went to go inside the school (which ended up not being good enough, little sis crying for a good five minutes as we drove off into the darkness). 

Will the girls remember these moments?  Of bonding and yearning for closeness? Will these moments knit their hearts and lives together?  I hope that adolescence doesn’t rob them of their closeness, their depending on each other, their simple assumption that sisters mean they are always orbiting in the same solar system.  Long after I have left this planet, I hope that I can smile down on them from heaven and see them loving each other still.

I know sometimes i get frustrated by the day-to-day pressures of parenting, that after the hurried pick up and clean up and homework and dinner ready, clean up again, bath time, story time, bed time, prayer time, that i’m ready to fall into my bed exhausted.  Yet, there are moments in the chaos, moments of calm, even delight, the simple pleasure they take in turning on the christmas tree lights, of slowly choosing a cd with christmas songs and picking their favorite one.  Of singing along to Rudolph the Red-Nosed reindeer, which little sis can do all on her own now...of accompanying me outside so I can dump our garbage in the bin, but on the way, oohing and aahing at all the new christmas lights our neighbors have put up, twinkling brightly against the darkness, because now that the sun sets so early.  Fighting over whose turn it is to check the mail and who gets to hold the letters.  Such small gestures and tiny actions in a world so much larger than our humble story...i just hope they remember them—or at least retain flashes of what we do together.  Helping me make the pumpkin pie—big sister carefully cracking the eggs, little sister asking to stir it all up.  Proudly giving one of our pumpkin pies to our neighbor whose husband has been in the hospital for the last six months.  Learning a Christmas craft with our neighbor across the street, Aunty P., who they adore.  Will these moments reside in their hearts and their minds, a memory planted so that one day, years from now, when they think about the holidays, they will remember feeling happy and laughing and being silly and wistful and excited?