Fried Eggs Frozen in Time

The other day I was rummaging in the secret spaces of an open cabinet above the refrigerator for  inserts to a Tupperware popsicle set.  I was sure the inserts still dwelled with us, somewhere in the environs of our kitchen spaces.   I found a cookie tin, no doubt a gift that housed holiday treats at one time.  Pouring out the contents, I discovered the sought after inserts.

And a fried egg.

Not a fried egg made from a hen's egg, but a fried egg made of plastic somewhere in Korea.

Part of a set by a major manufacturer of children's toys, purchased for the purpose of keeping Alpha Son Nick busy while I prepared dinner.  When the VCR & the backyard replaced his need to be near me & help with dinner, the dishes & plastic food manufactured somewhere in Korea were stored in his room in a brightly colored bin. 

Later, when Omega Son Sam was old enough to want to be near everything, he too, toyed with the dishes & the fried egg & poured delicious tea in tea cups, insisting that I taste.  

Even after the dishes & fried egg were retired, brought out for nieces & nephews, even after Sam discovered the VCR & that climbing on the swing set and the fort were more fun than a plastic fried egg manufactured in Korea, he liked tea time.

One of his favorite things was to get out a tea set from the china cabinet (his favorite was a miniature in the Blue Willow pattern) & have tea time.

Where he got this affinity for a European ritual, I don't know.  It drove most of the males in the family a bit crazy.  Such a strong, macho little boy liking tea time.

It is the little things we sometimes forget until we find them, frozen in time, that make a man.  Things that matter as much as care & diligence.  Bits & pieces & fragments of the world we create for them.

A fried egg, the last remaining Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle (Raphael), the hand from a small Mickey or Mini-Mouse doll, a miniature tea set, a Hoberman sphere, photographs of my favorite inner-city graffiti hanging in his closet, my paintings in his room, his name carved in the sidewalk, the books he reads.  The life he lives.

A young man, my youngest child, readies to leave, to build his own spaces, secret & visible.   Though I hold dear those frozen moments in times, I look out the kitchen window & remember him skipping through the backyard, singing to himself & the trees.  

Keep on singing, Sam.