Three years and a Michigan summer
Happy birthday, beautiful boy. Follow the flourish.
Your birthday came and went like a flash of lightning. It was here, and then it wasn’t, and isn’t that how Time works? The moments you want to slow and stop rush on by no matter how hard we grasp. I watched your smile flicker in the late light of Michigan’s golden summer at the exact time you were born three years earlier, and still, I wanted more. More time to feel the weight of you in my arms, your sweaty hands around my neck. More time to watch you, chocolate-mouthed and joy-filled from your cake made to look like a record. More time to listen to you sing songs from the top of the old picnic table in Papa’s backyard. More time to carry you into the soft blue water at sundown, splashing and laughing in wild abandon, the fireflies sparking like fireworks on the bank. We walked to the car in the moon-glow dark, back up the sandy hill flanked by beach grass, and I remember feeling more This. The water and the blue and you, more this. More this.
Will I ever stop wanting?
I’m afraid to say no, I don’t think I will. I will always want more with you. More time. More love. More life. The wanting feels different now, though. Different from last year. Now, the wanting feels rooted in presence and bounty, whereas last year the wanting was rooted in fear. I hadn’t realized how much fear colored my life until I read the letter I wrote you on the day you turned two. I was reminded of how scared I was to lose you. How much I would cry over the last time of everything you did and no longer did. How I didn’t know how to separate me from you and, in turn, saw your growth as both a blessing and a threat. I felt like I was waiting to lose you.
It surprised me to read about the fears because I’d completely forgotten to be afraid. This year something shifted, and I didn’t even know it. I don’t know how it shifted, maybe it was the countless hours of meditation I did while you were napping, laying out on your trampoline looking up at the portal of sky and trees and possibility. Or maybe it was the Wednesday morning therapy where I gave myself space to feel and understand all the things I had buried and never faced. Or maybe it was the daily walks around the lake, taking in the sound of the trees and birds and the water itself, taking in sunshine and rain and fog, taking in breath. Or maybe it was less about the taking in but the letting go. The release of control, grief, my own voice that sometimes gets caught in my throat. Maybe it was watching you grow in your joy and confidence and love and knowing you will always find your way back to me. Maybe it was everything.
It’s hard to pinpoint what exactly shifted. I just know that I no longer fear you growing up, at least not in the same way. I fear other things. I fear the stability of the future, not of us, but of everything around us. I fear losing myself to life and all its needs and uncertainties. I fear losing the words that have always been ready and waiting.
Sitting down to write you this letter, I realized how little I’ve written in the last three months. How I let life creep in with all its worries and demands and strip away the very thing that makes me feel alive. How I abandoned my novel for the third time (or was it the fourth? I’ve given up on myself so many times I can no longer keep track). How my journals are filled with worry and figuring out instead of wonder and prose. But here you are, bringing me back to myself like you always do. My little guide, forever showing me the way through or back or forward to all the things I’ve missed or lost or have yet to discover.
And so, my beautiful boy, I’ll reflect your wisdom back to you in hopes that neither of us forgets. Never stop doing the things that make you feel alive. Follow the flourish. The things that make your heart beat like the tide. That make you notice the strawberry moon and the still, blue heron at the water’s edge and the way the trees sound like the ocean in the wind. That make you laugh until your stomach hurts and cry wet-faced with joy and surrender. That wakes you up in the indigo dark or the copper morning because you simply cannot rest until you do it, feel it. That make you gasp, hand over your mouth in thrill and awe. That send a spark through your body like a hunger, like a need. That quenches the bottomless yearning if even for a moment.
Don’t lose yourself to life; allow it to crack you open again and again until you’re filled with the heart of everything you need and love.
I want to leave you with the letter I wrote you on the morning of your birthday. I opened the notebook your dad gifted me that June and the pages were already full of pressed wildflowers from your tiny hands, and still, I hadn’t written a word until your letter. My magic child, you are always bringing me back to my center, which is you, which is me, which is us.
Thank you. I love you. Everything.
Happy birthday my beautiful boy,
You’re three, and in the wise words of Mary Poppins, absolutely perfect in every way. You love Julie Andrews just like I did when I was a kid. You also love music, records, collecting rocks, jumping off just about anything, waffles, running, reading, the feel of sand flowing through your fingers, watermelon, sunshine, chocolate, and sleeping in. Your favorite place to go is the record store. We take you every week, and all the record store owners know you. You’re my wild magic joy child and every day I can’t believe how lucky I am to know you and love you and be loved by you.
As I’m writing this, we’re up in Michigan at Papa’s house. I’m sitting outside on the porch, and I can hear you through the screen door playing Eddie Money’s “Take Me Home Tonight” on the record player. The house smells like homemade waffles and strawberries. Your dad is filming you like he always does because we’re forever trying to hold onto every moment with you. We pour everything good that is in us, that IS us, into you, and I hope you feel it. I hope you know it—to know you’re loved fully and always no matter what.
Every evening, we have a ritual where I ask you about your favorite part of the day. I cherish hearing what brings you joy, the moments I hope you’ll hold onto, the things I hope you remember. After our recent weekend in a cabin by the lake and a visit to your great Grandma Linda's land—a place deeply meaningful to me—I posed our usual question, “What was your favorite part?” You were quiet, taking your time thinking about it. At first, I wondered if you were unsure or couldn't find the words. But then, finally, you said, “My favorite part was you and me.” That's the essence of it, darling—the truth of it. At the end of everything, when asked what I loved about this one wild and precious life, I’ll say, “You and me.”
You and me, forever and always.
Everything,
Mama
