Today I woke up feeling annoyed. I told this to J upon delivering coffee. I had put eggnog in his, a couple-of-times-per holiday season thing he enjoys, which was nice, but my immediate complaining was not. The reason, I said, was that I’d begun thinking about our day, including s a musical competition Gabe is participating in that takes place this afternoon. He’s supposed to look “nice,” which is problematic, as there is nothing that Gabe hates more than having to look “nice.” We’ve been fighting him on it since he was a child: weddings, funerals, school concerts. I’ve given in for the most part on the clothes battle (not worth it) but the anger flares on occasion and this was one of them. I envisioned asking him to dress at least slightly better than his normal sweatpants regime, and the arguing that would follow. Now that he’s older, his arguing is more sophisticated. He would tell me that “it doesn’t matter how you dress,” and I would be forced to respond with themes surrounding respect and expectations. I know I could give him choices of a few nice things to empower him, or tell him he simply has to do it and then walk away - I know the parenting tricks and tools - but what I wanted in that moment was to avoid the conflict altogether. To have him say, “ok!”

I resigned myself to my fate. But when I walked downstairs this morning, Gabe was sitting on the couch in the sunroom with a winter hat on. “Here I am!” he said in greeting. Smiling. He wanted to make cookies and I said that was fine. When I came down again later, after enjoying my coffee in the quiet of the bedroom with J (quiet except for my ongoing concerns regarding of the power battle I was going to have to suffer through later that day) I found he and Aidy sitting on the kitchen floor by the oven staring with rapt attention through the window. “We’re watching the cookies,” they said, hair all ruffled from sleep, side by side. And it was so cute. So very much a moment, bigger and more important than the petty battles, that I decided to sit down and write about it right away so I wouldn’t forget; so it would, without doubt, imprint itself into my memory as the stuff that matters.