2 : 353 : 3 : 2

Just before three o’clock, Yali and I drove past the entire 3rd grade class running hard in P.E. behind the school. Annie-Bea waved, clearly pushing past the pain of running…

“A whole mile!” a bright and happy red-faced Heidi declared proudly about fifteen minutes later. “One kid ran it in three minutes!”

I tried to wrap my head around the concept of a 3rd grader running a whole mile in three minutes. I’m pretty sure they’d make a movie out of it. But three minutes, or thirty, the point was that they had finished running a mile at P.E., and that was a pretty big deal. Heidi’s face remained rosy for at least the next half hour.

“Here, Mom,” Puck said proudly, when he walked out of carpool. “This is for you.”

He placed a potted pink flower in my hands, in a hand-painted pot. I noted that he had taken more care than usual to paint alternating blue and yellow stripes around the sides.

“Look what I put on there,” he said with a little embarrassed grin.

“Oh, you painted a smiley face on there for me! I like it!”

“TWO smiley faces!” he said, even more proudly.

For a kid who’s never really been too much into the idea of celebrating Mother’s Day – I guess because it’s one of those rare holidays there’s pretty much zero chance of him ever receiving gifts in any form – this gift meant more than most.

As we left school that afternoon, Yali decided to dramatically throw himself on the ground in a display of protest. The sun was out and the monkey bars called to him. Puck intervened to carry him to the car for me. Yali was having none of that.

“Now, Yali,” Puck put on his stern ‘dad voice’. “You should go easy on me. I just ran a mile today for the first time, okay?”

At 7:15, Carrie-Bri and I found ourselves sitting in about our favorite section of Busch Stadium – always in the 300s somewhere near home plate – not exactly pleased with the Pirates’ starting lineup. For some inexplicable reason, Pirates manager Clint Hurdler had chosen to eliminate any possibility of David Freese taking the field that night. All we saw was the #23 jersey standing in line for the National Anthem, and that was it. No hometown hero standing ovation return for that boy.

“That’s just spite,” I suggested.

We left the chilly stadium under the irritating shadow of another National League Central match-up loss.