“Mama, you’re going to have to wait till next year for the pink branches. I can’t reach them.”
“That’s OK. I really don’t want you to reach them this year or the next. Because that will mean you’re getting big.”
“But I want to be big.”
“I know, and I want you to be big, too. But it will still make me sad.”
“I want to be bigger than Daddy.”
“I think you will someday. You have your Grandpa Petrovits’s build.”
“…and I want to be bigger than you, too.”
“Considering Grandpa Petrovits is six foot one, I think you’ll have that covered.”
“I want to be a skyscraper!”
“A skyscraper!” I marveled. “Imagine that? … Oh, but wait a minute…I don’t think a skyscraper would fit into that Phineas and Ferb shirt you just wrote Santa about.”
He didn’t say anything for a while. He worked on until he attached the last branch within his reach, picked a few pieces of last year’s tinsel from his half-finished product, and turned to me with a sudden look of inspiration.
“Hey! Can you open my letter to Santa again?” he asked.
“Why? It already has a stamp.”
“Because,” he replied, a bit impatiently. “I forgot to order an extra large!”
I’m thinking of adding my own request to that letter before sealing it up again. “Dear Santa…Take me back to the days when absolutely no dream was out of reach, and when every single problem had a solution.”