How to Say I Love You Without Saying I Love You
Look at the moon!
He blows a kiss to her from across the living room, and she doesn’t know what to do with it at first. Curls still matted at her neck, her Disney princess blanket wrapped around her lap, and her empty milk cup on the end table. Morning light hasn’t quite made it through the windows on this side of the house, so yellow light from the floor lamp pools on the ground.
I point to the invisible kiss in the air in front of her—There it is! Catch it!— and pretend to grab it in my hands and plant it on her cheek. She’s starting to understand now, and he sends over another kiss—Oooh, it’s flying fast! And she grabs it. She sends a kiss back to him, which is mostly just her shooting her palm out like a superhero and puffing air through her mouth. He pretends to catch her kiss on the tops of his feet like a soccer ball and bounces it up again in the air. He opens the bottom of his shirt, catching the kiss as if it's stuck inside him.
//
“I wish I had a ponytail like that. I wish I had a strawberry dress. I wish I had a cupcake. I wish I had a puppy.”
Taking a break from the playground, my daughter starts a made-up game where we each take turns listing things we wish we had.
"It's your turn!" she says, placing a hand on my husband’s shoulder.
He opens his mouth to speak, but no words come out. He pauses for a moment before saying, "I wish I had a home, a place with roots." He tries to smile at the silly game, crinkles in the corners of his eyes begin to form then disappear.
It's one of those moments where he seems to leave us, like a balloon drifting away from a child's hand.
I pick up the game where it was dropped. "Hmm, I wish I had a cup of coffee!"
Suddenly, he is back with us on the park bench, the balloon popping or disappearing altogether.
"I wish I had... ice cream!" he exclaims, making an exaggerated shocked face. The mischievous glimmer in his eyes returns, and my daughter stares back, eagerly anticipating what he'll say next. Does he mean what she hopes he means? He nods, confirming her dreams are about to come true, and we get up from the bench in search of ice cream.
//
I crack open the last bedtime book, finally getting to the end of our long, drawn-out bedtime routine. My daughter is cozy and settled next to me in her bed, a blanket tucked tightly under each side of her, her beat-up crochet rabbit in one hand and a fuzzy baby blanket clutched in the other. Just as I am beginning to read the story, my husband comes breezing into the bedroom. I call him “Mr. Typhoon” in Farsi because, whenever he enters a room, it’s like a giant swirl of energy splashing over everything.
Get up! Get up! He shouts excitedly, motioning with his hands for us to get out of bed. Look at the moon!
We push the covers back and clamor out of bed, dumping the book on the ground, always up to look at the moon.
We can see it before we open the door to the balcony: a big, full, bright yellow moon hanging so low in the sky that part of it is still tucked behind the bluffs. My daughter runs to the end of the balcony, eager to get as close to it as possible. “It’s a sun-moon!” she declares.
The three of us sit back on the rocking bench, taking in the full moon that has now fully risen over the bluffs, looking like a perfectly round dinner plate hanging in the sky.
The glow of the golden moon against a dark sky eases our minds a bit, for that moment at least. We don’t know where we’re going, but we’ll all be together.
This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "Ours".
Your title drew me in immediately and then your words continued (as usual) to tell a beautiful story.
So beautiful, Sarah. 💕