Birthday Letters

An amazing Greensboro book club asked me a great question on Monday: Dear Carolina is written from two mothers to their daughter. Do you write letters to your son? 

Do I? Sure. Not 350 pages of them, but, from time to time. On days like today. On his fourth birthday when I can’t possibly imagine that he has already been in the world for four years, yet, somehow, I can’t seem to remember what the world was like before he was in it. Or maybe I don’t want to. 

I tell him things like how I didn’t know how much I would grow up that day. Right in that moment. I didn’t realize that every, single thing in my life would change. Every thought I had would be different. Every priority. Everything that I’d believed suddenly shifted, either made greater or less or not at all. 

For twenty-six years I had just been me. And, in one second, I went from being me to being a mother. I didn’t know what a difference that would make. How my thoughts would so instantly turn from me to him. How my love would so instantly intensify, not just for him but for everyone because every, single person has one person who feels about them like I feel about him. They all have a mother. And all she wants is for every person on earth to see her child the way she does. 

I tell him things like how, some days, he drives me up the wall. Really. Doesn’t want any of the thirteen pairs of shorts I have laid out. Doesn’t want that for breakfast. Doesn’t understand that when we have five minutes to get to school, taking nine minutes to buckle the carseat BY. MY. SELF, of course, is not really an option. But, somehow, one moment of him driving me crazy is better than all of the other un-crazy moments before he was here combined.

And all those cuddles and kisses? They’re the best ones I could ever hope for, that I could ever have. And, even while I have them, my heart is breaking a little because I know it will be way too soon that he won’t want to kiss me anymore. Or cuddle me. Or tell me he loves me out loud for his whole class to hear. I’ll look back on those days when he was a baby, when he wouldn’t let me put him down for one, single second, and I’ll wish I could be back there, that I could have him all to myself again, that I could be that tired and cranky and happy for just one more day.

And it’s days like today, when I really think about how fast it’s going, when I take the time to sit down and write — not on my blog or my next book or an article I have due — but to my son, my heart. I remember to slow down. I remember what matters. And, for that brief moment in time, the world makes perfect sense. Because, when you stop and smell the roses or pick up that pebble or blow out that birthday candle, when you see through the eyes of a child again, everything seems so very simple.