Your 11th trip around the sun is approaching, a divining number of course. You eat protein like an endurance athlete and our grocery bills have nearly doubled. You fit in my socks, and now the only ones I can ever find in my drawer are pink. You ride your skateboard in the house and installed your dad’s old pullup bar in your bedroom door frame. Last month, you marked your initials on the ninja mastery board at the top of the 12 foot warped wall. Your skis have gone from a pizza to a parallel and I don’t remember when it happened. You open up and reveal the most about your journey when you are 15 feet up in your favorite black birch tree, me at the bottom listening, listening, listen-praying that you don’t fall out.

We work on a new kind of basics now....don’t eat like a Viking, don’t stick a knife in the toaster, don’t put tinfoil in the microwave, don’t forget your helmet, don’t dive in the shallow end of a pool, don’t talk to strangers, definitely don’t talk to internet strangers.

Your sense of humor is outpacing mine in wit and banter, and I’ll spend this year trying to photograph that tongue-in-cheek while you tell me that ravel and unravel mean the same thing. Sometimes I’d like to remind you that I taught you how to use a spoon.

We talk about hard things that I wish I could save you from. I’m realizing you are old enough for much more truth now and how important it is to keep teaching you about empathy, humility, respect, and grace. But you are also learning how to create your own boundaries and how to hold a space for those that are suffering without assuming the burden of trying to fix things. I’m not prepared for these conversations about human relationships, and I awkwardly stumble and fumble my way through hoping not to reveal my novice and appreciating your patience. Grace indeed.

In your crackling preteen voice you accuse me of being overprotective but you have yet to find the stockpile of bubble wrap I’ve been saving in the basement since the day you were born. So I hug you and apologetically joke that you are the first kid, a bench test at parenting. We may not be getting it right, maybe sometimes we kind of do okay-ish.

When all else fades away, know this...Know it SO DEEP IN YOUR BONES that it bookends your heart like twilight bookends your days....You are worthy, you are wanted. You are loved simply by being a child of the universe, for being ours. You do not need to earn it, do not need to do anything to keep it and it will never, ever be taken away. Our love will be yours till the end of time.

Sun, moon, stars and back again, kiddo.