It’s hard to know exactly what it is. It might be my tummy, particularly the squishiest bit. It might be my perfume, or even my natural scent. It could be my hands when I pat him off to sleep. Or even the snuggle I give him on the couch. I’m not sure if it’s there all the time, but I know it’s there when we nap together. And I know he likes it.
It’s my hot warm.
This is Tyson’s term. He’s four and somewhere along the line, he decided that something about me is my “hot warm”.
This week is a week that I’m parenting solo, with my husband doing extra long hours at work. For some reason, all three kids have found their crazy this week and bedtimes have particularly be tough.
So, breaking all the rules, slightly out of desperation, I’ve just put Tyson to bed in my bed to sleep for the night. As I left him there, flustered more by the twins than by him, I told him I wouldn’t be in for a while. He said, “When you come in to sleep, I can smell your hot warm. And yesterday, you went to sleep while I touched your hot warm”. This was followed by an almost embarrassed giggle and I nearly melted right there on the spot.
(NB: The reference to yesterday’s sleep doesn’t clear up the mystery of the hot warm, given that I barely slept with his feet firmly planted in my back.)
Smellable and touchable and probably unknowable, but always said with such affection, I know my hot warm is something Tyson loves most about me. It makes me his. And in the difficult moments, my heart fills at the thought that I’m lucky enough to have one.
I never want to lose my hot warm.