Only Anecdotal

He was the first of my children to be born in Vermont, about five miles from the Canadian border. Less than a year into a new life in the Northeast Kingdom, we drove the hour in moonlight to a quiet hospital in the middle of the night, and my second boy was born.

I had no idea then how much my perception of the world would change within the next year–hadn’t it already with his brother? Doesn’t it always witha child?–but no. This was a child to make me throw my “What To Expect” books clear into the backyard snow the next winter. That quiet, sweet, beautiful boy did learn to walk, yes, taught by a horse when he was four (true story, yes a miracle). He learned some things, and not some things, and everything more slowly than those books said he was supposed to, more slowly than his brother, and his sisters, and he stayed young–as the developmental experts said. Say. He did not learn to talk, not yet, but still, over the years, he has told me so many things.

He told me of the important qualities to look for in people: love, strength, patience, honesty, connection. Not the loud, not the flash, not the big promise nor the fear. My son told me how to see, how to fight, how to love, how to choose, how to understand the smallest of things, and the quietest, and the most important.

When we think of the abrupt changes that can happen in a few words, a diagnosis, a guess, a realization that, alas, everyone else is growing up all around us, it is easy to think of what we did expect, what was supposed to be, sounds trite to say it, since we all eventually face some version of this, sometime in a life.  He is why I am who I am now, and on days like this, when I think of how far we have come, I have cake and open presents with him, and am glad to see him smile. I imagine life through his experience of it, and I hope/think it is a good life, so many changes, so much so hard to understand. It has been hard. No, I won’t lie about that. We face a future (yes, of course we think of it often)… well, didn’t we always face uncertainty and chaos?  Oh, my boy, I know that the best gift, today after all, is the one you have given to me. You give me hope.  Happy Birthday.