Son

It’s true.  I love you most when you’re asleep.  As you’re doing next to me now.  But that most is not much more than when you’re awake.  I’m just more tired when you’re awake.

I know you understand because when I sigh, you know exactly which sigh it is. 

It may be the Good God Can You Just Do What I’ve Asked 10 Times Already Sigh.  Or the I Can’t Possibly Do Another Dish Sigh.  Followed by the Dammit We’re Late AGAIN Sigh.

And sometimes the sigh is not even directed at you at all, but you notice and ask.  It’s the sigh that worries you most because you were so sure you’d been doing everything right. 

And I tell you it wasn’t for you, and that makes you happy.  And I forget what I was sighing for in the first place.

The other truth is, you amaze me.

When you were 3 days old, I laid you down on the playmat, the one with the red, black and white contrasting patterns meant to be visible to newborns.  Above your head swung the rings, just out of reach, not yet meant to test you, just for you to lay and watch.

But you wanted to be tested, so you reached for the rings.  You reached up like an old, trembling, dying man reaching for the light he’d waited all his life to grasp.  Determined as though it were his last and most important task.  You earnestly reached as if your soul had waited a hundred years to test its humanity.  And you got it.

It was at that moment that I understood how some men and women could be great.  How some had the inborn perseverance to reach the rings.  How they created their own inspiration.

You do this – reach for the ring – every now and then when people let you, when you’re allowed the freedom to pick your own challenge.  You’ll invent and create and play and answer and joke and feel. 

When I watched your first race yesterday, I was optimistically unconcerned with your stroke technique or your speed.  Instead I saw your future and what could be.  I saw you start to reach for that ring that I know you’ll get on your own.

The truthiest of truths is that I believe in you.  In your fiery passion.  Your deep empathy.  Your honest remorse.  Your intense strength.  Your encircling love. 

And your goodness, which is not blatantly apparent, but which I know you have.  You’ve inherited it from your dad, and that’s how I know it will be there forever.

So my son, though I take so much of you for granted, and I sigh more than praise, and I seem to get in the way sometimes, please know that above all, I believe in you.

Darling?  Wake up, darling.  Happy birthday.