"Always Stay the Same"

Not long before she died, my Mayme sent me a card. She sent me a lot of cards throughout my lifetime, and I still have plenty of them - but none of them means as much to me as this one particular one.

On the inside, all it said was this:

"Always stay the same."

That level of love and acceptance - of liking me exactly like I was, a know-it-all, stubborn, somewhat-geeky teenager - still brings tears to my eyes. It also sums up exactly how I feel about Freddie Pressley's tender little heart when I tell you what happened tonite.

While the boys were at catechism, I decided to skip my own class (don't tell) and go to Target. Among other things, I wanted to look for winter hats that are actually big enough for my boys' colossal noggins.

It didn't take long to find the perfect one for Freddie. Probably prompted by too much "Scooby Doo," he's always running around, acting like a monster, so when I placed this hat on his head after church, he reacted exactly as I thought he would - full on monster-mode. We walked to Jones's classroom, and Freddie asked me to hold him up, so his big brother would notice him lurking in the upper half of the Dutch door.

When we got home, I asked him, "Are you gonna wear your new hat to school tomorrow?" He suddenly got very serious. "But I might scare Mrs. Shana," he said, oozing sweet sincerity. I later told him I thought it was okay, that Mrs. Shana wouldn't be scared. He said, "Yeah. I'm a nice monster. I won't be cross at her."

Hey, Freddie.

"Always stay the same."

(Also, a few weeks ago, I was tucking Freddie into bed when he said, "Let's kiss together." By that, he meant, "Let's kiss on the lips." Since then, "kissing together" has become a thing, and I finally got a Boomerang of it, so that I'll never forget the once upon a time that he wanted to "kiss together" with his mama.)