I kind of can't believe you. You are the sort of boy I'd sometimes heard mothers talk about-- the kind of son they describe with starry eyes and an sudden brightness to their voices, which shed ten or twenty or thirty years and skip right back to the beginning of motherhood.
There's a lot of possibility there in those early years. With your first child, there's also a lot of fear, but with your second, there's a sort of lightness of being that makes the long summer nights just a little bit sweeter. I worry less about the berry juice and taste more of the berry; I wash less of the laundry and work harder to create it. You brought that out in me, and I thank you.
I am old and red and freckled, and you are the eternal giraffe.
Silas, your eyes are gorgeous. They are the first part of you that comes to the minds of both those that love you and those who've only met you once. "Oh, those big brown eyes!" they tell me. "Like chocolate!" Your Great-Grandma Gertie had eyes like that too, Silas. Deep and endless, and kind. People are fond of saying this, but those eyes really will make you a heart-breaker one day, my boy. I guarantee it.
So much has happened this past year. You started walking, started really talking, and started being a little brother to that sister of yours. Generally this involves immediate rejection from whichever one of the reindeer games in which you've tried to be involved, but sometimes you take things to a whole new level. Just tonight, while you splashed in the bath together, I looked up to see you sitting behind her and quietly pouring water on the back of her hair. She had her eyes closed and her head tilted back and I gasped, because you were INTERACTING in a way that was MEANINGFUL and not completely ORCHESTRATED by your father or I. It was the Silas in you coming out, in that moment. The part of you that's yours and not a developmental stage. I see that more and more often these past few months. You're emerging.
Look at y'all being all adorable and safe for the Internet.
And yet: you are two. You are obsessed with fire trucks and love construction vehicles and can't sleep without your "Tigy" and kiss inanimate objects goodnight. Just this afternoon you said goodnight to the car cart in the grocery store that another little kid was riding in. You think that if something isn't available to you the minute you want it, it must be sleeping. I'm pretty sure that's my fault.
You are joyful. You are affectionate. You are a mama's boy, in that "NO, MOMMY, NO!" can be heard echoing down the block or two floors away in church or wherever you are when a substitute caregiver steps in. Grandmothers are both loved and hated, because sometimes when they come around, Mama leaves. "NO, MOMMY, NO!"
It is a privilege and honor to be your mother. I cannot wait to see what sort of creature you will become, given that your sister is a sort of marvelously fanciful artist bunny who seems to have landed on this planet for a limited time only yet deigned to grace us with her presence. What will you add to the mix, as you grow older? What will the four of us become?
Right now, we are tired and happy and tired again. They days are full and sometimes overwhelming and sometimes we don't see as much of you as we'd like, but give me a half an hour in a chair to watch you at your train table any day over almost anything.
That's not your birthday cake, and not your party-- we'll get to that next week. Something else about being a second child...
You are precious to us, my darling boy. You are precious to me. Happy birthday.
Much love,
Mommy
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