An unabashed love-letter to Boy-o, at 5

My dearest Boy-o,

Another whole year has passed since I last wrote to  you.  I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how you are five already.  Five!  I remember so well your dramatic entrance into this world (as if it could have been any other way!), our slow drive home from the hospital on that unbelievably warm Halifax December day, sun streaming into the windows onto your tiny, gorgeous face.

I remember, too, the startling sensation slowly washing over the entirety of me; you, this tiny little person, changed everything. You rocked my world and shifted my foundation and made me yours. Made me better.  Stronger.  Braver.  More capable.  Cracked my heart open and stretched it with your tiny, sure hands to fit right around you.

(It grows to fit around you still).

Each day, your growing and learning and open-heartedness amazes me, as does your unflagging energy. Your full-bodied kitchen dance moves, deep belly laughs, and total inability to tell a joke without starting with the punchline or busting a gut laughing in the middle never fails to invoke small moments of bliss.

Your capacity to love, full-out, hands open, no-holds-barred, and without reservation is beautiful and inspiring to witness. Your energy is alternatively fiery passion and quiet contemplation, without a lick of middle ground. (I cannot, for the life of me, figure out where you got this from... No peanut gallery comments here.). You are fierceness personified, my love, and though our intensities sometimes clash (and clash well!), I wouldn't have it any other way.

I have been, and continue to be, stunned and moved by the grace and bravery (and, I think, forgiveness,) with which you have handled the difficult life changes thrown your way in the past little while, cementing my belief that began at your birth, that you are a wise-beyond-your-years-old-soul.

To tell you that I love you would be such an inadequate way to describe what I feel.  So know this:  When I tell you I love you, what I mean is that I do not remember what life looked like before you were in it.  I did not know such intenseness of love and such fierce protectiveness, or such fear of loss was possible before you came into my world.   When I tell you that I love you, what I mean is that even after the hardest, most exhausting of parenting days, those days when we drive each other absolutely nuts, when I look at your sweetly sleeping face, I am overcome with such a visceral sense of how ridiculously lucky I am to be a part of your life; how you carry the very best parts of me; how really, we are growing up together.  When I tell you that I love you, what I mean is that this love thing I have for you sustains me and breaks me and rebuilds me and soothes me, all at once.  What I mean is that I am wildly, intensely, irrevocably yours.

I am so very grateful to know you, and to have your love and trust, Boy-o.

Happy fifth birthday, little love.

Yours always,

Mama


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