We Will Always Do This

Yesterday Ozzy asked me if the Easter Bunny is real. Totally off-season, after sitting on Santa's knee at the mall, writing him letters, looking for Elf on the Shelf each morning, but yesterday he said with all the nonchalance of a warm spring afternoon, maybe the Easter Bunny is the parents, what do you think about that? I was unsetting our house alarm when he said it, my back to him, punching the code into the system so I wouldn't set off the alarm when I left. Ummm, I said, like maybe I wasn't really paying attention, and then I turned around and told him there was a spider on the wall right behind him. SPIDER! Like that. And he screamed, and I screamed, and we left the room and the conversation really quickly.

That's what I think about that.

2019. I make them kneel at the tree. Closer! Directing, setting the shot. At 13 and 8, they still look tiny if you squint your eyes.

2018. The curve of the cheek, the zig zag part.

2017. The jammies.

2016. A departure that year. But your arms around each other! I said.

2015. The year he looks older, a precursor to one day when he will be taller.

2014. The cheek on this one gets me every time.

2013. Looking back, I would have done an outfit change. 

2012. The naked back.

2011. Before he could stand on his own.

2010. Her last year as an only child.

2009. Missing. What happened in 2009? No freaking clue.

2008. The last of the fluff.

2007. The cotton-headed ninny muggins that started it all.

I don't believe in lying. One day I will tell him that. That the Easter Bunny is maybe yes most certainly the parents, Santa, too, that Elf on the Shelf isn't a narc, and I will show him the plastic baggie I have filled with all of their milk teeth pushed way back in my bedside table drawer because the Tooth Fairy isn't real either. There is no reason to be afraid of spiders, I will say, and then I will tell them both that lying is complicated, almost as complicated as magic, but it doesn't even come close to the complications of love. Because what is real is this. The roundness of their heads together year after year.