loving and learning

Last night, Henry says to me: "Mama, don't wash your feet tonight." (Washing was, on the face of it, strongly indicated.)
"Why not?"
"Because I love you the way you are, and I love dirt."

***

This morning, my sweet naked Henry, with his knees wrapped thickly in surgical gauze, after he skinned them yesterday afternoon while gamboling at the cemetery with Peter) caught my eye in the bathroom mirror and said, "I'm trying to not make you put me in the green room, Mama." (Yesterday morning I popped him in the green room for what I suppose is in fact a time out, although I reprobate the term. While there, he found Peter's phone and called Susan in San Francisco.)
Experiencing indefinable pangs of something--motheguilt-- I said, "That sounds good."
"Because," he went on, "You really need to learn not to do that. It makes people cry."

Comforting the wounded with Sesame Street.