Dear Ethan,

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You were born just yesterday – but that was four years ago. If you ever do read this, you’ll be older still.

You are growing up. You hair isn’t silky soft anymore. Your knees aren’t smooth and plump, rather they are lanky and rough with scabs and scars already. Your breath isn’t fresh in the morning. Life and decay have already begun to impress upon you.

Sometimes you make me laugh. Sometimes you makes me cry. Sometimes I scream my head off.

Sometimes I remember the little boy you were just a skip step behind. When we went on a mommy/son only date to the library and you said, “Mama, I love you so much. I don’t know what I would do without you.” Like a flood, I remember how close we once were. How intuned we were. How holding you close, my first born little boy, was heaven to me.

I remember giving birth to you, carrying you around, watching you grow amazingly chubby from vats of breastmilk. I see you now, trying to balance the immaturity of a 2 year old with the maturity of a 7 year old. Practicing, however unsuccessfully at times, to grow and learn the magnitude of expectations the world has of you. You grapple with the loss of the infant-mother bond, the difficulties of your relationship with your father, your adoration towards your baby sister. Your brain understands complex relationships well beyond your years, and yet you struggle with saying “please” or keeping your voice down. How very frustrating it all must be; trying to control one’s body, regulate emotions, practice using your own voice.

You are an ocean of unknown to me. Sometimes I cuddle and play with you based only on guesswork. Never have a faced a mountain in life I was so unprepared and ill-equipped and completely inadequate to tackle. I hope you will forgive me for all my failures with you, for all the times I missed out on something great you had to tell me, for all the events that ended in tears.

You, Ethan, are so self-sufficient, a self-learner, brave and gentle and transparently loving. You are strong-willed and easily frustrated when you aren’t able to explain your intentions and wants. When you are severely disappointed, you express yourself so dramatically: “You are breaking my heart and hurting my feelings!” You are patient, having shared your mother with her work simultaneously for four years, and now also with your sister.

While I can’t deny my excitement in seeing you grow, in all the new things you learn to do and be, I admit I wish I could jump back in time and smell your soft baby hair. I secretly wish to go back, for just a moment, to those years when all I had to do was make a suggestion or warning and along you followed, never considering an alternative plot of your own free will. (Back then, you never had a 500 word monologue of rebuttal ready to present for my reconsideration!)

As you fall asleep in big boy Transformers PJ’s to, of all things, Anne of Green Gables, I am overwhelmed with the melancholy passage of time.

I love you. I love you so much it aches sometimes. I am so proud of you for facing this life so valiantly, already, at only four. The world is better for having you in it, and I’m humbled to be your mother.

Mama