I have found the window above a kitchen sink is an unusual source of joy. A quick glance into the outside world helps the mundane job of washing dishes to pass more quickly, especially at sunset, which is my favorite part of the day.

A sea of pink flooded the swirling cirrus clouds that filled the western sky.
Winter sunsets are just magical; the light seems to hang in the sky like a dwindling fire that has been burning for hours but hasn’t yet lost it’s woodsy fuel.

I stood at the sink washing the first round of dishes, the ones that are dirtied simply by dinner prep, as my eyes gazed out the West-facing window and scanned the heavens that were unfolding above. The large oak tree unfurled it’s shadowy darkness against the firey sky. I searched the tree for our neighborhood owl but she was nowhere to be found. Maybe she had slept in this evening?

 

 The clouds lower in the sky caught the sunlight and burst forth with beautiful gold and tangerine hues. The bottom of each cloud was lined in brilliant light almost overpowering the rose tones higher above. I inhaled as I set the clean dish into the drying rack and stood in awe at the beauty. Only an ocean could have made this scene any more brilliant, it’s power to mirror the breathtaking moment would be perfectly picturesque. A reflective body of water would have been serene at this moment…or perhaps just a simple pair of pants would do, too.

 

I froze for the shortest of moments. I could feel the inqusitive mom-look crawling up my face, my eyebrows pushing up into my creasing forehead as my eyes began to glare straight toward the backyard. The left side of my lips ever so slightly bent upward while the other side remained flat.

 

Even though there were only two dishes left, I paused my plate-washing routine as I abruptly pushed the handle down on the faucet to turn the water off. I squinted my eyes to make sure that I had truly seen a bright white bum scampering across the trampoline just outside my kitchen window.

Another flash, and I do mean flash in all context, darted across the frame of the window.

Yup. There it was.

The short January days mixed with the shallow winter light had made my son’s summer tan disappear. His round and cushy rump was so white it actually reflected the brilliant sunset that was spilled across the sky above him. Refracted light had given him a pink deriere. Second-hand sunlight produced a tiny salmon-tinted hinny, or rather, a rose moon.

I aggressively tapped on that glass window to catch the attention of the owner of that rosy toushe that was freely bounding around the trampoline.

And then it happened…

He turned his head and his little blue eyes, as wide as the wind was free that was blowing through his hair, met my intense focus. He did a belly drop to lie flat on the trampoline as though he would become part of the black canvas mat and just disappear from sight. But that rosy ka-tookus gave him away as it glowed from the glittering light above.

I thought about how I should respond to this, because, boys will be boys, after all. Every mother has experienced charming little adventures such as this, especially if they have boys. A half naked child bounding though the air is probably more of an eyefull than our neighbors want to witness, not to mention that if I let this instance go without any parental guidance then I might very well have a fully naked child skating, or even worse, jumping on the pogo stick, in my driveway the next day.

 

Those pants were back on in the short six seconds it took me to reach the back door (a small nugget of information I will bring back up on school mornings when we drag about rather than getting dressed). As I pulled it open, he was almost to the door, his cheeks, and I mean his facial cheeks, were as rosy as his tiny hiney had been just seconds before. His facial glow wasn’t from the sunset though. He had been caught red-handed…or red-rumped…and he knew it.

Gentle words weigh heavy on a tender heart, or so I’ve learned through the years as a mother. After reminding him of the world we live in today, and that a covering of clothes are always a necessity, I then added just a little tag on the end. Should his bare backside ever meet the stitching of the trampoline mat again, it should probably be done in the shrouded darkness, lit only by the marvelously muted light of the night…The big white moon in the sky would shine down on the adventuresome little rose moon jumping wild and free.