To My Son

Ten years have passed since I first heard your cry and held you in my arms. You are so tall now that I sometimes forget you were small then; thick dark hair covering a head slightly cone-shaped from your long and arduous entrance into the world. I felt relief, exhaustion, pleasure at finally seeing your sweet face after a long nine-months-plus-a-week of pregnancy; I also had no idea what I was getting into. Does anyone?

I couldn’t predict the joy and fullness you would bring to our lives. This is Daddy’s story too, not just mine. I didn’t know that watching you grow would be such fun that we would pray to the Lord to bless us with another child – and then again, and again, and again He would answer. I didn’t know how much I needed to learn and grow as a person and how you would help me along with that. I’m still learning – you’re still helping me.

You are beautifully, endearingly, human – a glorious mixture of talents and troubles, strengths and struggles – and I feel the weight of my desire to give you the very best childhood yet also the relief of knowing that I will fail you, it won’t be perfect, and you’ll still be okay. Ten years has shown me this already. I have failed, I have been distracted and exhausted and impatient and upset and sometimes all of these at once, yet here you are – smarter than ever, still smiling that toothy grin, and as willing to clamber up onto my lap as you were nine years ago.

I am amazed by the diligence and perseverance you show when you’re engrossed in your favorite projects. I love watching your passions come alive and your eyes sparkle when you recount to me the latest book you read. I see you learning to care for, remembering to think of your siblings, and it warms my heart – because this is so hard for you. We’ve practiced empathy continually and I have despaired of ever seeing improvement, but suddenly it’s there – a small green bud of hope poking up through the frozen ground. Your quirky sense of humor, your astoundingly detailed drawings, your ridiculous jokes, your beautiful brown eyes, your complete inability to throw or catch a single thing, your inerrant memory for facts and figures; I am awed and humbled by it all. Humbled, because I had so little to do with this. A little room to grow, a little freedom, feed his mind with ideas, and watch him unfold. The only true education is self-education. You are endlessly creative, eternally inquisitive, and I pray that this never ends.

You have borne with us as we have brought home baby after baby, and you have endured the changes, welcomed the new sibling with enthusiasm, and watched us struggle through long days and sleepless nights. I would apologize for putting you through all this, except that it’s not worth the apology. Siblings are a great gift, and your youngest brother will never* know the joy of meeting a new one and watching them grow day by day.

* barring Acts of God or Unforeseen Circumstances or Spontaneous Adoption

I kept you home from school because I was selfish. Life is short, your childhood even shorter – I don’t want to miss any more of it than I must. And now that our school years are half over, I feel this even more acutely. Someday you’ll leave and I’ll be so very proud of how you’ve grown, and how capable and independent you will be – but I already am. From the beginning you have been intelligent, creative, and curious, because, just like every other child to grace the planet, you are truly a person. Not just a small creature who will someday be a real person of value but in the meantime is rather a nuisance and a bother; not just an almost-adult who might someday have thoughts and ideas and contributions to this world but in the meantime can be easily ignored; but a human worthy of respect and consideration. Not worthy because of your talents and virtues but because you, like me, like the celebrities and the orphaned children and the world leaders and the homeless people and the neighbors up and down our street, are God-breathed. Made in His image. Ones for whom Christ died. Loved by the God of the universe, whether or not we deserve it. (Hint – we don’t.) I was vaguely aware of this before – after all, I was a child too, once – but you have made it clear to me again.

“Enjoy it,” say the grandmothers in the grocery store. “Soon he’ll be a teen and won’t ever talk to you again!” Little do they know of my sinister plot to enjoy every one of your teen years too. How could I not? Sure, it will be hard, and there will be challenges, and I have no idea what the heck I’m doing. This feels like an appropriate time to offer my apologies – contrary to popular belief, parents often do not know what they’re doing and this occurs with greatest frequency for the oldest child. You are our experiment, our guinea pig, our trial-and-error.

And yet, I believe in you. You will be strong and you will be resilient and you will forgive us when we hurt you.

I believe in us. Daddy and I love you fiercely and we will work for you and we will pray for you and we will try, and try, and try again.

Most importantly, I believe in the God who made you and sent you to our family – the God who knows, understands each of us and has a good and glorious plan for your life. He will not forsake us.

Time is unrelenting. Each morning you appear a little taller, a little wiser, a tiny step farther forward on your journey toward adulthood. The distance between your eyes and mine is disappearing at an appalling rate. I struggle to remember these moments, to fix these good ol’ days in my mind for eternity. Pictures help, videos help, words I’ve quickly jotted down help, but much of the past remains a blur of busy days and too-short nights. The future is a mist, and what of today? Today I will hug you and muss your hair and tell you yet again that I love you. You will smile and say “I love you too, Mom,” although you don’t really know what I mean. Someday in the far-off future, when you hold your own little bundle of brand-new humanity, you will know.

You are a gift, a blessing, a joy, occasionally a trial, and always an adventure. Aren’t we all?

It is an extravagant privilege to watch you grow, to have a front-row seat to your life, to cheer you on as you work to figure out your place in it.

You will find it, I know, and you’ll blow us all away.

Originally written March 17 2023