Dear Cleveland,
I want to wish you a Happy Birthday. I want to go buy you a bagel this morning and take you to the park and the beach and to meet your dad at work for lunch. I want to let you tear into one gift, even though you have to wait until Sunday for your party. I want to watch Lucie and Coco give you big hugs as you all put on party hats because we do party hats in this house. And balloons. Because birthdays are awesome.
Before that, I want tell you about becoming your mother.
Every time I look at you, I’m flooded with the specks and stardust of fuzzy mommy memories that we’ve made together. I think a million little things about you, and I want you to know.
****Before I was pregnant with you, I was afraid of motherhood. I was lost. I was unsure of myself and my purpose. I was technically an adult, a married professional 20-something woman who was supposed to have it together. The world saw me that way. I saw a fraud. I was too scared to fail at everything, and so never tried anything. I went to graduate school. Then I went again. I had a good job. I married the one. we had a mortgage and a joint checking account and still I didn’t know. How to be me. How to love fiercely.****
And then we made you.
[At this point, you might do well to thank me, since you know, with a bit of help, I created you and nurtured you and bore you and have managed to keep you sustained for seven years.]
Don’t thank me.
Instead, let me thank you.
Thank you for giving me a pregnancy that was challenging enough to make me feel accomplished but not so hard to break my spirit.
Thank you for giving me a full belly. I needed permission to take care of myself. To eat well, to exercise. As my belly grew, the fear I had of a growing belly vanished. I was no longer afraid to take up space, as I had been in adolescence.
Thank you for the pain and persistence of your delivery; for those fast gripping moments of grunting and sweating and pushing and tearing at the neck of my hospital gown. I learned then that calm and chaos can exist together. I relearn this daily.
Thank you for all the “good-baby” ways that you were when you were tiny; eater, sleeper, quiet, happy. I believed in those moments that I was good, too. So my goodness grew.
Thank you for giving me confidence to open my mouth when in the past I might have sat by silently. To push the pediatrician for the ophthalmology referral. To tell your father that yes I really did think I knew enough about reading to teach you to do it myself.
Thank you for being anxious, and nervous, because you’ve forced me to confront my own anxiety. I didn’t feel entitled to manage my tics and worries when they were just my own, but our shared experience compels me to be my best self. Not only for you. For me, too.
Thank you for being a big brother. I always wanted one growing up. Watching you with your sisters and brother only confirms for me what an amazing gift you are.
Thank you for screaming (sometimes). It gives me practice at lowering my voice.
Thank you for your impatience. I need to know that no place is worth getting to so quickly that I shame you in the process. We can slow down.
Thank you for your frustration. When you feel defeated, I am given another opportunity to craft in you a place of possibility.
Thank you for being easy, and hard.
Thank you for being born, because, when you were born, I was born, too.
I made you.
And then you made me.
Happy Birthday. Now, go play with your lightsaber and remind me for the 58th time exactly what kind of cake you want. Exactly. (Vanilla, just like your dad).
I love you,
Mama
