My son, in a nutshell

I go to pick up my son from school. I'd told him I might not be there, the mentors had said they would hang on to him while I went to sort out our lives.

"We're not moving anywhere!" I say as I see him.

His face beams. I can't remember what he said. Sometimes I find his beauty overwhelming.

"He was very frightened earlier today," says the classroom assistant.

"Oh god, it's so hard to hide things from them when you live so close together."

"Mummy, mummy, look what I made!"

It's a piece of green card and in a cut on the top, slots a self portrait he's drawn with an open mouthed incredibly toothy grin. On the card he has written:

"My hair is brown, my eyes are brown and I Love playing on my psp. My name is x. I like laughing alot."

I love his laugh. His laugh can have me laughing when I don't even know what it's about. I can't describe it for you, but Dickens can describe Scrooge's nephew, and I must quote him so you get an idea of why I love my son's laugh so much. It is the same:

"'Ha, ha!' laughed Scrooge's nephew. 'Ha, ha, ha!'
If you should happen, by any unlikely chance, to know a man more blessed in a laugh than Scrooge's nephew (my son), all I can say is, I should like to know him too. Introduce him to me, and I'll cultivate his acquaintance.
It is a fair, even handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humour. When Scrooge's nephew (my son) laughed in this way... - (in my son's case like a song) - Scrooge's niece, by marriage (me, my son's mother) laughed as heartily as he (well, mine is a silent side splitting laugh). And their (my son's) assembled friends, being not a bit behind, roared out lustily.
'Ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha, ha!'" (A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens, interrupted of course, by Stiggers)

I am one very blessed woman to have been given my boy, that's all I can say about my son, in a nutshell.