A snapshot in time at the perfect moment caught a child covered head to bare toe in a thin layer of dirt.
I gaze at the frayed picture and a slow smile spreads across my face.
His bright eyes peer back at me. A kid having a very good day.
My eyes drift over his face and I see his pink skin has a brown tint with a darker smudge covering his perfect nose.
The only clean thing on him are his white teeth smiling back at me.
His neck had dirty crease marks making stripes on him. His shirt and shorts were already brown.
His hands (that I was constantly cleaning) gripped the bicycle handle bars easily. The grime stuck to him as if it were second skin.
His knees and shins were also coated in the unavoidable muck.
But my favorite part of this picture are his toes. They look like dirty little sausages planted on the pedals. 10 digits covered with the brown coating the rest of the body has on it.
How he got so dirty is beyond me. But I'm so glad I was there to catch a moment in time of a wonderfully dirty day.
I don't know if I've ever been that dirty. Maybe, but probably not.
What I do know is that I cherish this picture because it's the genuine smile that gleams through the grunge on my little boy.
4 comments:
That was beautiful Jenn, I can almost see the picture in my head.
Re: Hillsborough
It was a huge story here, it still is. The victims families are still 20 years later waiting for compensation and for someone to be held accountable.
The youngest victim was 10 and he was the cousin of Steven Gerrard who is the current Liverpool captain. I bet his family couldn't be more proud of him.
As to mayos (groan). It's a place I don't want to be. I feel this more and more and it's sad cos there are still lovely people there that I like to chat to. Surely, it can't go on much longer like this.
I know my responses have been lax as of late.
I currently picked up a second job. Actually, have to leave for it right now.
Your son is in his teens now, right?
Oh my gosh, that just made me tear up. That has got to be one of the sweetest things that I have read in a long time.
Makes me think of our adventure....
LHM splashed through mud puddles this weekend while we were making our way up to The Rocks with my Dad. He had such a good time bouncing around in the water, kind of halfway hiking around, making like he was Bear Grylls. Well, on our way out, he plowed through just like he came in, straight through the mud puddles. All the other little kids were in awe, you could see on their faces, "how is he getting to do that and not get in trouble?" He got to the very last mud hole and jumped right into the center, except, the inevitable happened, (what he wanted to happen all along), FACEPLANT! He was muddy and soaked from head to toe, but he came up giggling and we were rolling with laughter. This only encouraged him to turn right back around and do it again. When we left, LHM was in the back of truck (too wet and dirty to ride in the front), and I had a little grubby muddy handprint on the back of my pale yellow shirt, a smile on my face and a little twinge of jealousy that I couldn't ride in the back with him.
Good times, good memories.
Nothing like 'em.
Thank you, Jenn, so much for sharing. Reading this really made me smile (while I was tearing up!)
Umm, Marco?
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