At approximately 3:26 p.m. eastern time, you and I will celebrate the 18th anniversary of the beginning of our adventure together. It feels like counting mile markers on a long cross country drive together.
In thinking back over your birth, I think there is a pretty on target metaphor for our relationship, as it has progressed. Your characteristic "face first" approach to things, coupled with my characteristic unwillingness to let go, resulted in a fast birth by c-section.
And there you were, the tiniest, baldest little thing I’d ever seen. When I took you home I felt so incompetent, and fairly sure I would kill you within days. The first year of your life was full of a nagging fear that you’d be taken from me, because I didn’t deserve to love something so much. Keeping you alive for 18 years still feels like a miracle. I have never quite known what I was doing.
Margaret still makes fun of our drive to Colorado to stay with Grandmother when you were three months old, and me making her turn around and poke you every time you fell asleep, to make sure you were still breathing. In retrospect, it is quite likely that most of the times you cried as a baby were due to me poking you, waking you, making sure you were still breathing. You, with the tiny awareness that you were separate from me, and me with the inability to let go.
You spoke, almost immediately, in complete sentences, and from the time you could talk your talk was a manifestation of your amazing imagination. Your imagination, included the belief that we were all players in your play, and I remember hours of "okay, I’m the mommy, you’re the baby" types of play, where I followed your dogged direction. Anything to be part of your world. Anything not to let go.
I think of our time together as full moments of me reluctantly watching you leaving me. You, following the bigger kids in the neighborhood around, determined that you could do anything they could do, me, quite certain that every step would result in a wipeout. You, raking the lawn at six, dragging the rake diagonally across the grass with such determination and grace that it took my breath away. You, planning your presidential campaign platform, the basis of which, if I recall correctly included protection of the manatees and the outlawing of port-o-potties. You, off on airplanes, off on adventures that would be just yours, me on the ground, holding my breath until you returned home safe to me. Of the two of us, you are the more amazing; outspoken, compassionate, passionate and courageous.
This past year has been amazing for me, as I have watched you grow to the point that we can almost talk about this tension that drives us, and binds us together. You’re still ready to go. I’m still trying to hold on to you, for a little bit longer. And as you bound out, into the world, as I know you will, as I know you have already, I am apprehensive and excited both. The world is open to you, and you can truly do anything. I am excited to see what you choose.
I love you so. You are my one who knows.
Love,
Mom