Somehow, My Baby Is Turning 13
I look at you, son, standing eye to eye, and I want to say I
can’t believe you’re turning 13 . . . but I can.
You blew out your candles last night, turned around, hoisted
me into the air in front of everyone, and high-fived me.
You passed me this year, just slightly taller. We grin and
laugh about it, but in my heart I think, I’m so glad you’re growing
kind, too. That you use your strength to lift heavy boxes and to carry
your baby sister.
Your blonde hair, dirtier now than the white-gold I
remember, is waving and curling around your ears. I see your bald head as a
baby, and tears trickle down my cheeks as I giggle and remember how I
waited two years for your hair to grow. When it did, I didn’t want to cut a
single one of those dancing curls. I still have some of them in a plastic bag
tucked in a box in the attic.
But it’s your smile that catches me, your wide grin
stretching across your face, and your curls are like rays of sunshine beaming
from that smile. I hear your bubbling giggle as you belly laugh at your own
silliness and invite us to laugh with you, the
2-year-old boy in
his pajamas bobbing his head as he dances through the white farmhouse where we
used to live.
“Mommy, will you play with me?” You asked
repeatedly as I attempted to wash dishes or make dinner, and I recall that
voice in my head reminding me that, “The days are long, but the years are
short.” I’m so glad I said yes so many times, even for 15 minutes, to play with
you and your John Deere “dadoos” (tractors) or Fisher Price parking garage. We
would go outside and you would run your Matchbox cars over the mountain of a
dirt pile leftover from a house project.
You never wanted to sit still unless it was to listen to a
story, so we read lots of books by Richard Scarry and Go, Dog, Go and Goodnight
Gorilla and More, More, More Said the Baby because I
wanted to cuddle you as close as I could for as long as you’d let me.
Those were the days when I could keep up with each new
vocabulary word, the brief window of time before the flood of language
enveloped you and carried you down rivers to oceans of words and concepts and
comprehension of meanings of things. I could barely keep up, and then I lost my
grip in that flood. I used to know every new book, each new show, and then you
began reading and watching without me and your world expanded to realms beyond
what I could experience with you.
When your brother was born, I didn’t know how my love could
multiply to embrace both of you. The older and wiser moms kept telling me it
would. What I latched on to was the idea that you and your brother were gifts
to each other, and oh how you are! Your strengths and weaknesses balance one
another, and you stretch each other. You think in tandem. You brainstorm and
build and run together. Your bond of brotherhood runs so deep.
Now I can’t pretend to keep up with your ideas and theories,
“what ifs” and “have you ever” thoughts, but I can see the worlds you create as
you put your pencil to paper and unleash your imagination through art. You give
me a window into the breadth of your mind that races so much faster than mine.
As my mommy-brain grasps for memories to hold onto, seeks to
go back and retrieve moments, I’m surprised by the mundane. Those routines, the
repetition, was for me as well as for you.
All those onesies I washed and folded and placed in your
closet before you were born, the kisses good-night and bedtime stories, the
countless walks to the park (pushes on the swing and slides down the sliding
board), the jogs in the jogging stroller and the rides in the red wagon, those
sunlit afternoons in the dirt pile and the birthday cakes we made
together—those were all for both of us. For me and you. Together.
Those moments, somehow simultaneously so short and so long,
are gifts. Together they make up memories. But even more, it’s in those moments
that you became the young man I see standing before me today. And I feel so privileged
and blessed to walk this journey with you.
Thank you, son. You are a gift.
This article was first published at Her View From Home.
You can follow Katie Faris on Facebook and Instagram or learn more about her book Loving My Children: Embracing Biblical Motherhood here.
You can follow Katie Faris on Facebook and Instagram or learn more about her book Loving My Children: Embracing Biblical Motherhood here.