Just yesterday I picked you up...all wiggly, wriggly you of giggle-fits and toddler-temper. I gathered up the whole of you into my arms in one swoop -a perfect, easy fit- brushed sweaty curls off frowny forehead, and whispered "I love you to pieces."...
...and you, momentarily snuggled up and docile, scrunched up both fists and lips and muttered "Mami, I don't want to be in pieces!" and launched yourself out of my hug.
Those simple words stuck to you for weeks...nipping at you just before bed, and poking at you in the middle of our morning prep. In the rear-view mirror, I'd catch glances of you grimacing and hear your whispered "I don't want to be in pieces". You worried those careless, carefree words of mine right into a nightmare of missing fingers and lumpy, jumbled limbs. And I, stifling a giggle at your childish comprehension, spent those weeks reassuring you that I would ever keep you intact and, in fact, loved you whole...wholly.
(That summer I had a puzzle made from a photograph of you. Pieces, indeed! What fun we had putting you together over and again! And then, of course, we had to make more puzzles...one of me, and one for each friend. Well into fall, you drew puzzle lines across all your artwork, and used your safety-scissors on every piece of paper you could get your hands on!)
I write this now, caught up in that memory, with an itch...an ache...in my arms for that whirling dervish of little-boy-you ~ for hugs that burned with your feverish energy ~ for the tug of your hands knotting up in my hair ~ for the snuffles of contentment in my ear as you nestled as close as you could, trying to push right through my skin and into my heart. How I miss those moments you'd tame...wild child to drowsy cherub...with just a little back scratch. How I miss the way you shook yourself awake as we rocked back and forth in midday sun~lullabying down into naptime. And I, arms full of you, thinking all the while...
"I love you to pieces."
~~~
Oh, how I miss him...
...and every other you you've been.
I miss them all...
...all your pieces.
They've scattered through the timeline now. All interwoven...blending into one another as they swirl about. Blurry round the edges until a spark...a scent or sound or sight...brings one into stark relief and I daydream my way back. Pieces of you tumbling back through 18 years and spiraling off into the future. The collected moments of who you've always been...who you're becoming...and every moment in between:
~dried up sprigs of wildflowers offered from grubby hands
~a treasure box of beads and shells from eagle-eyed wanderings
~faded sticky notes and paper scraps with wobbly lettering
~the faintest mark on the mirror from where you'd daily write "I love you, Mami" in the bathtime steam
~a veritable fortune of masterpieces rendered in colored shaving foam, and a tangle of the finest noodle necklaces
~totes upon totes of school papers and reports...of travel brochures and ticket stubs...of birthday cards and lunchnotes and "I love you because..." scribblings
~photographs and videos and voice memos and printed out copies of google hangouts message streams
All your pieces.
I've saved them all...kept the whole of your life intact in the collecting and storing, as you shed off remnants and left behind the bits and baubles of boyhood...and grew up.
I have loved you from pieces into this whole.
I have loved you into adulthood.
I have loved you to 18...