To My Son On His Birthday

My first baby was a girl. I was hoping, when I found out that I was pregnant a second time, that it would be a boy. I wanted a boy more than I can say. As I lay on the operating table, wide awake, my belly cut open as my husband looked on, they pulled the baby out of me. For some odd reason I said "Is it a girl, is it a girl?" I knew it was a boy because they did the sonogram and told me. The room was ready with all the boyish decor. Why did I say that? the only reason I can think of is that I didn't want to be disapointed. Still, how odd.





And a true boy he was.  In those days we had dolls for boys and cars and trucks for girls.  It was a way of sort of breaking the stereotypical ideas of what boys and girls like.  Still, Ian, our boy, my baby boy, always went for the cars, trucks and building materials.




The first thing he did when I brought him home from the hospital was pee on my while changing his diaper.  You know, I slammed the diaper on his crotch to keep it from spraying in my face.  I think that was sort of a metaphor for his life from then on.  He was a thinker.  When he sat in the back in his car seat I would look in the rear view mirror and see him quietly and very still, looking out the window, pondering who knows what.  When he was old enough to talk, one night when his daddy was tucking him into his bed, he asked, "What keeps the walls on our house from falling in?"  Yep, my boy.


Of course babies grow up to be toddlers and toddlers to little boys and then little boys to big boys and boys to men.  Time: it waits for no one. 


When he was in grade school, at the end of one year, the teachers were to think of words that best described each of their students.  Ian's word? Determined. It fit so well, it was so true.  It still is.


So, this isn't going to be a blog about going down memory lane, it's just a blog to wish my boy, who is a man now, a happy birthday.  I won't be with him, but fortunately his sister and her family will be.  I'm really happy for that because they've always been close.


So son, here's to you on your 31st birthday...Your father and I are more than proud of you for who you are.  I'm proud of you for things like getting in your car and driving, and not stopping until you got to the ocean.  You are a determined man who will get what he wants, it's just up to you to find out what you really want. 

"A mother held her new baby and very slowly rocked him back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And while she held him, she sang:

I'll love you forever,
I'll like you for always,
As long as I'm living
my baby you'll be.

The baby grew. He grew and he grew and he grew.

 

But at night time, she opened the door to his room, crawled across the floor, looked up over the side of his bed; and if he was really asleep she picked him up and rocked him back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. While she rocked him she sang:

I'll love you forever,
I'll like you for always,
As long as I'm living
my baby you'll be.

 

He grew and he grew and he grew. He grew until he was a grown-up man. He left home and got a house across town. But sometimes on dark nights the mother got into her car and drove across town. If all the lights in her son's house were out, she opened his bedroom window, crawled across the floor, and looked up over the side of his bed. If that great big man was really asleep she picked him up and rocked him back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And while she rocked him she sang:

I'll love you forever,
I'll like you for always,
As long as I'm living
my baby you'll be. "

 

I wish you all you have ever hoped or dreamed for.  I love you!