mom-on-roof, bless her heart, keeps bringing things to mind. This time, it's things that I'd like my kids to remember.

Will Mercedes remember the hour we spent in the kitchen, talking about periods, how they'll affect her, how her dad is a safe person to talk to about it, and her grandfather probably isn't. About how boys go through puberty, and how some of them think that once a girl has her first period, she bleeds every day of the rest of her life. Will she remember our movie nights of eating a whole pound of donut holes and splitting a quart of chocolate milk?

Will Alex remember anything? Do we have anything special that's just us? Well, we have the bedtime ritual, which has gotten a little more elaborate over the past couple of years. But I don't think there's much else.

The kids have their own special relationship, which never ceases to amaze me. Mercedes has always been loving to Alex, even after he's given her just cause to put his head through a wall. She shares with him. She has a patience for him that I've never seen between two siblings. I love to think that I had something to do with that, but I know that a lot of it is her old soul. I see it in her a lot. She shows the same boredom that she did when she was a baby - there's a sense of "I've already done this, I'm really not interested."
I've gotten distracted. I'm not sure where I was going with this. I know that the kids will remember special moments. I have so many memories of the wonderful things my mother did for me - the day we spent gathering wildflowers and pressing them for homemade contac-paper bookmarks, the board game she made up for us that she named "The Bored Game," the clever Easter egg hunt she devised for me, and so much more.

I know these things stick. I just hope that I can give my kids enough good memories to inspire them when they're grown with kids of their own.

the last trail...the next path