The Love of an Almost Five Year Old

birdwatch Ireland

We’ve got a pretty cool next door neighbour.  They don’t do an awful lot; just sit there pretty much all day surveying their surroundings and keeping an eye on things.  At least every time I look out the window, they’re in the same spot.  

When I go for a run with our Juno dog each morning, our neighbour is sitting in the field.  

One day he (I feel he’s a he) was on the fence post, right up close and I stopped in my tracks, absolutely amazed and enthralled at the proximity.

Our neighbour is a buzzard. 

Yep, we have those in Ireland.  I’ve seen our neighbour with a “friend” over Christmas.  Only once, mind. Both of them, side by side in the field, and then they disappeared. 

Smallest Boy reckoned they had gone off “on a date to get baby eagle chicks for spring.”  

He may not be wrong.

But this is not a story about our glorious, magnificent buzzard.  Instead it is about the time I got married over Christmas for the second time.

To smallest Boy.

He loves me.  I cannot creep upstairs with the laundry, a glass of wine, a book or a magazine and he smells my absence.  Minutes later I hear his soft step on the stairs and he appears; fuzzy bed head russet hair the first thing I see on the stairs as the rest of him appears.

He climbs up onto the bed beside me “for chats.”

On this day both of us were looking out the window at our neighbour who was perched atop his fence post in the field.

“Do you love him, Mammy?”  Smallest Boy asked, twisting his head to look at me.

“I do “.  I confirmed.  “I think he is awesome.  He is amazing and fabulous.”

“And do you love me?”

“I do.”  I kissed him.  Hard.  “I think he is an awesome and amazing buzzard and you are an awesome and amazing real human boy.”

“And are we still married?  Forever?”

“Forever and ever. “ I confirmed.  “Don’t I have that lovely ring downstairs to prove it?”

He grinned at me, happy with my answer.

“You can keep Daddy too.”  He told me.  “Coz I think you are allowed be married to two people.”

I kissed the top of his head and we both of us looked out at our neighbour, surveying his surroundings and keeping an eye on things.