My precious son,
I’ve waited a lifetime to know you, and you’ve surpassed every expectation.
I am sitting here, in mostly stunned silence, at how we could possibly be here…celebrating the day you were born. It’s suddenly your birthday, already.
I’ll be the first to admit that I am not ready.
I have learned many things this last year with you, but one theme that repeats frequently in my heart is the truth about time, and how impossible it is, how cruel to all parents who know the love for a child. I just want to keep you forever. There is something so heartbreaking about the finality of the end of your infant year to your mother’s heart. Maybe it lies somewhere in the years I longed to hold you. Or perhaps it’s tucked into the questions of the unknown (mostly, in that most loaded question…the one about siblings and such…and if that will happen for us). Or maybe it’s that, as your tiny body grows into the form you were designed to fill, I know you will find your own strength. That I may always be your mama, but you won’t always be my newborn baby. That all the ways I’ve filled your needs this year will be replaced by time and the world and people apart from our sacred bubble.
And I am not ready.
I’ve tried to memorize the sounds you would make as you latched satisfied onto your bottle (gulp-sigh-gulp-sigh). The way you stare, most mesmerized, at any fan or light fixture. The way those tiny teeth appear in your mouth when you grin. How you reach up for me to hold you when you first wake up, or when you’re scared, or when you’re not feeling well (we’ve had our fair share of those, haven’t we, Bubbie). Your infectious joy, how you fill a room with your light. Your curiosity for the world around you. Your inhibition to love all God’s people. You’ve made your parents better in so many ways. You’re all the proof I’ll ever need that Love lives…that there is a kind God who loves us and is for us.
You are my perfect love, and I pray you always know the warmth of your mothers arms will be here to safely call you home.
How could I ever settle for just one year with you, my baby, when ten thousand years would never be enough?
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