Flowers For Me

These are the flowers that a young man brought me today. He was about 42" tall, was sporting a backwards ball cap, he had on camouflaged shorts, a t-shirt and gigantic blue frog rainboots. He brought them to me because I am his mom. Certainly not because I had just briefed him on why we do not throw rocks at the neighbor's house. Or because I had asked him to make up his bed AND put his pajamas in the hamper. Or because I took away the balloon he was playing with before he could suck it down his throat. Despite all these orders and instructions, he went outside and picked me flowers. An entire bucket of flowers. This is the boy that I have physically held in the timeout chair for 20 minutes- not once- but several times, the boy who peed on a floor outlet and caught our living room on fire, the boy who swallowed a nickel, the boy who climbed the picnic table and tried to climb over the deck railing- the 2-story deck railing, the boy who has recently discovered Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - much to his mother's delight, the boy who wore only one pair of shoes all fall and winter- a pair of fire-breathing dragon high-top converses. This boy brought me flowers. Lucky me.