My pride in the band-aid on my cell phone.

I was thinking about this yesterday and I vowed not to forget and to write about it in my blog.

When I was younger, I'd see these "parent things" that were basically destroyed by children. A mom driving the family station wagon, with rock band bumper stickers stuck crookedly on it. A beat up drum set, permanently placed in the family room. A hutch covered with scratch and sniff stickers. Windows with fire safety and Mr. Ugg decals. Bedrooms covered with gunk from glow in the dark stars. An gnawed ET figurine in the China cabinet with the mother's most prized glassware.

In my life, I have two things that have children's marks on them. The first is the craft section. It has stickers all over the glass cabinet door that Emmett wanted to put there. The second is my cell phone. Emmett stuck a "Butt Ugly Martians" band-aid on it about 4 months ago, and I've never taken it off.

So I started thinking about why this band-aid gives me joy every time I see it and why I never take the stickers off the cabinet. And I realized that these marks are pride for a mother. It shows the involvement of her child. It shows family. She's claimed. She's the mother hen, and her children have rights over things that are important to her. But it's this RIGHT, that brings pride.

Everytime I open my cell phone and see this ugly yellow band-aid, it's almost like a photograph of Emmett. And it's precious to me. Everytime I walk by the cabinet and see the stickers, there's a sweet feeling "Emmett's here. Emmett's involved. Emmett feels this is HIS house". And I think about my kids being teenagers and wanting to put stickers on my car, or wanting to hang something in the living room, or putting a poster in my front window, or having the van be a permanent place for the drums, or marking my cell phone with a sticker of their favorite band, and I WILL LET THEM, because there's pride I have in knowing that they are mine and that I am theirs and our lives are intermingled to the point that they want to put their individual marks on things that we share. That they feel enough a part of my world that they want to brand things.