Nine years ago I picked you up from preschool and you reported that the kids dressed in pink did NOT like to get splashed with mud. I used to collect matchbox cars and popsicle sticks and cool rocks from the bottom of the washing machine. Now I find used arcade cards, potato chip bags and Gatorade bottles from the corners of your room. Yesterday I found your old baby blanket tucked away in a bin under your bed and my heart nearly stopped at the memory of you rubbing it’s satin edge against your baby cheek to soothe yourself. We used to put your sleep sack on backwards just to keep you from climbing out of the crib at all hours of the night and now we set two alarm clocks so you don’t oversleep and miss the first middle school bell. There’s an irony that we have three different safety monitoring systems set up for your various devices but you are the only one in the house who knows how to make the PlayStation switch back over to the Apple TV. Every Monday we argue on the way to guitar lessons about having to do guitar lessons. On the way home we get Chic-fil-A and play classic rock trivia while you tell me how your fingers are finally long enough to play different chords across the fret board. I’m just thrilled to have a break from your phase with the drums.

I see the hint of a lip shadow that is no longer just leftover chocolate milk. Like your dad, you are more Greek than Irish and you’ll likely be shaving by the end of your 13th year. Its in your eyes where I see the boy I once knew. In like a lion and smack dab during an endless snow blizzard - a terrifying emergency entrance that came a month too soon, making time stop while we all worked and waited, worked and waited to see if you’d come around and breathe and decide to stay with us. 

Its my understanding that some people believe souls are born at conception…and yet others believe some souls wait to use that first human breath to unify their spirit consciousness and earthly body. As it was, the moment you finally took air into your lungs was exactly the moment I began holding the air in mine.