What he doesn't say

Hudson told me yesterday that he wanted to go and watch Handy Manny on the television. Mind you he didn’t say “TV” or “shows” like most of his counterparts. He said, “tele-vi-sion.” His abundance of fluent ramblings are delightful and clever and all, but it is the one thing that he hasn’t said which bothers me.

Hudson has not said, “I love you”.

More specifically, he hasn’t said it to me.
He has said it to Josh. His friend Kaelyn. The stray cat. Handy Manny. I am pretty sure he even told his new matchbox car Adam and Becky just gave him that he loved it, but he hasn’t said it to his Mama.

Little turkey.

Every night I say, “I love you, Hudson” as I give him his final kiss before I leave the room for Josh to read him his stories. And every night he says, “Yeah,” with the same placid security that we all possess when thinking of the love of our mothers. No frills. No need to immediately reciprocate. Just the safety of “yeah” to let me rest assured that he knows it. He feels it. He understands that I love him.

I anxiously wait the day when he will say it back to me: spontaneously and from the heart. Just as anxiously as I waited for him to come to exist nearly three years ago this Thanksgiving season. You would think God has handed me enough exercises in patience for me to be better at this by now…