An open letter to my son on his birthday.

Fifteen years ago (and some change), you were born. I became a mother. Your mother, to be exact. And the truth is, I hadn’t the vaguest idea of what to do with you.

I hadn’t spent a lot of time thinking about motherhood, one way or the other, until I was suddenly knee deep in it’s fabulous and terrifying chaos. More terrifying than fabulous in those sleep-addled early days when everyone had an opinion and most opinions were that I was doing it wrong. It didn’t help that my only real experience with kids was being one, so I didn’t have much of a skill set to build from, going in.

Your Dad had to teach me how to change your diaper, and when he returned to work, I would have him drop you and I off at your grandparents house to spend the day so I wouldn’t be alone with you. Or more precisely, you wouldn’t have to be alone with me. I made your Grandma give you your first bath so I wouldn’t drop you. (I know you’re going to kill me for mentioning your bath in public, but I think it’s an important point.)

One night I laid you on the sofa and turned my back for just a second, just like they always warn you not to do with babies who could learn to roll over at any minute, and of course you chose that minute to learn to roll over. You fell on the floor and began to cry and I yelled for your Dad in a panic, terrified that my neglect and that 16 inch drop had damaged you permanently.

It didn’t. But really, it’s a wonder you survived my love.

I read everything I could get my hands on in those early days, of course, sure that books would be my saviors and friends in this new adventure as they always had been before. It wasn’t long, though, before the differing agendas of the experts made my head spin. The propaganda of it all, how many ways there were to raise a child and every one so certain that theirs was the only right way. And they hadn’t even met you!

It began to feel like the “experts” just seemed to be the ones with the cleverest turn of phrase or the loudest voices or the snazziest book covers on the shelves that week.

So I stopped listening to them and started listening to you.

As a teacher you weren’t always kind or forgiving. As a student, I wasn’t always quick. We spent plenty of sleepless nights together, you and I, sometimes crying in harmony. But you never gave up on me. And slowly and painstakingly over the years you made me into a mother. I couldn’t have done it without you, you know. Wouldn’t have. (Certainly wouldn’t have chosen to do it twice more if you hadn’t turned out so perfectly lovely, so when you regret having siblings, remember it’s your own fault.)

We called you Khy-Khy then, back when you would only say a new word once – as though a request for confirmation – then file it away for some future time when a finger point and an urgent noise would no longer be sufficient to get you what you needed. (It was amazing how long a finger point and an urgent noise sufficed in getting you what you needed.) You slept with a toy alligator, hard and plastic, said “Duck” in a deep rumbly voice like a quack, and loved your Papa most of all.

Nowadays you tower over me and your voice rumbles not at all like a quack. You’ve spent the last year fighting with your little brother over everything and nothing and then everything some more. For a while Modern Warfare 2 made you so angry on a regular basis that we started calling “WHAT?!?! Wow. Just, wow!” your catch phrase and threatened to get it on a t-shirt for you. (I still might. Christmas is practically around the corner.)

You still love pizza, video games, Monster energy drinks, and hanging out with your friends. Everyone who knows you now calls you to consult before buying a new video game, because you’ve read every review and not only know what’s good or bad, but generally the entire history of the company that produced the game.

You remain the only person in the family who likes Family Guy. You have no interest in learning to drive.

In this past year you’ve lost your Grandma, your Grandpa Cliff and the house you grew up in across the street from the best friend you’ve grown up with. You attended your first concert – Blink 182 at the White River Amphitheater. You crashed on a motorcycle and suffered your wounds, stoic and proud. You’re going to be really pissed if the one on your left arm doesn’t scar, because you know you earned that scar.

I like that you understand that scars are something that you earn, not just something that happens to you.

My serious faced boy with the giant conscience and the gravely earnest manner has given way to a testosterone addled teenager with an impish grin and a penchant for making his siblings complain. Sometimes it takes me by surprise, realizing that you aren’t as steadfast and reliable as you once were, back when at 5 years old you were already the one who would remember the library card when I didn’t.

It’s a beautiful thing, seeing you relax in the knowledge that you’ve gotten the parents trained well enough that you can be about the business of childhood at last. And while that means you aren’t always careful or even kind – especially with your siblings, but sometimes even with me – when you’re needed you take great pride in stepping up and coming through.

You called me out once this year when we were visiting with out-of-town relatives – you pointed out that I had bragged about both your sister and your brother and their various accomplishments, but I hadn’t said anything about you and yours. But what you’d missed in the exchange was their already admiring glances in your direction. You don’t realize yet, how nearly full grown you are, or how you shine. The proof is in the pudding, as they say, and you’re very nearly pudding nowadays.

And lately I find myself calling you Khy-Khy again (though never, not ever, in front of your friends) – not to hold you in place; not to shadow the man you’ve become with the ghost of the little boy you once were. But maybe just to remind us both of where we began.

Love you always.
Mom

Khyron Patrick, last month

My beautiful boy, eldest son and heir to the throne, my warrior with a poet’s heart, long and tall and newly fifteen (I want to hyperventilate just typing that); I plan to write a letter documenting the past (crazy, crazy) year of his life, punctuated by goofy pictures of fleeting moments captured on pixel, but the picture discs are all packed up and I am currently crazy with the move. I can’t even get a super current photograph this morning, because the birthday boy himself is still asleep just now and by the time he gets up there will be doings; friends and cake and video games (his wish for this birthday, two big screen TVs in the living room hooked up to two Xbox 360s) and presents and I’ll find myself back out in the garage and out of the way, pricing items for tomorrow’s garage sale.

Khyron Patrick, 6th birthday party

So the sentimental outpourings of my heart when I think of this nearly-man who is my son will have to wait a bit. But I do, at least, have a poem to share. It’s going to make me cry, too, because that’s just how I am about these things.

Sentimental Moment or Why Did the Baguette Cross the Road?
by Robert Hershon

Don’t fill up on bread
I say absent-mindedly
The servings here are huge

My son, whose hair may be
receding a bit, says
Did you really just
say that to me?

What he doesn’t know
is that when we’re walking
together, when we get
to the curb
I sometimes start to reach
for his hand

Dads, Daughters and Dandelions
by Timothy J. Buchholz

The first days of spring
Sunshine, little girls and dandelions
will always be very special to me.

Memories of my little girl
following along behind her Daddy,
awed at the wonder of nature,
the wonder of the world.

And her cries of delight
at discovering the beautiful little yellow flowers
that would spring up all over the lawn and garden
at the first signs of spring,
seemingly overnight.

There is nothing that can compare
with the sounds of delight,
and the wondrous look in the eyes of a child,
as they gather these treasures,
as a gift to those they love most.
A special time.

But, as with all things,
Reality sets in,
and wanting your daughter
to learn of things of nature and the world
you explain to her that these pretty flowers are weeds,
weeds that spread,
and are a nuisance to the gardener and homeowner.

The look you get should be censored
and no amount of logic can convince her
that dandelions are anything but
the most beautiful flower in the world.
And after many lovely bouquets from that little girl
with that special look in her eyes,
you begin to think so, too.

Life goes on
you continue fighting dandelions
though not so vigorously
once in awhile allowing a few to survive
and even pretending you don’t see
her blowing the seed pods in the air.
Content to know the little aggravation caused you
is worth the happiness it brings her.

She’s a young lady now
maturing
blossoming in her own right
caught up in the challenge
of going from teen to young adult
and sometimes you feel
left out, passed by.

Today
a beautiful sunny early spring day
driving down the street,
I saw two little girls on a hillside
picking bouquets of dandelions
and as I passed by
I heard their delightful cries
and saw the wondrous look in their eyes.

And in my eyes there were tears as I thought
Why does the wonder flee,
the look disappear,
why can’t they keep it forever?

A short time later I related this feeling to my daughter
and she looked at me, smiling -
gently touched my shoulder and said
“Daddy, I won’t do that.
I won’t lose that feeling.”

And as I looked in her eyes
I saw that special look,
that look of wonder
and suddenly I knew what sometimes isn’t spoken.

There will always be
a spot in her heart full of Spring,
Sunshine,
Dandelions,
and Me.

Our relationship, nearly 17, formed as it was on a hot summer’s day in spite of our shyness and Chad and Travis always seeming to be about, is old enough now to give blood and to see R-rated movies without permission. Our marriage, 15 years old tomorrow, is moody and deep voiced and can test for a learner’s permit.

I looked it up, and we’re supposed to buy each other watches, I guess. Or possibly Austria. But probably some lame crystal tchotchke that will collect dust and won’t match the Star Wars toys and skull decor in the living room.

Back in 1995, when we made our vows in front of a judge who couldn’t keep our names straight, I don’t think there was one person in the entire world who really expected us to make it. Not even me, maybe, though it was nothing personal and I was certainly game to try. I was all-in. And in 15/17 years together, the times when I’ve honestly thought that I regretted saying “I do” to you wouldn’t even add up to an hour. Probably not even 5 minutes, actually. And anyway, those were only times when I was being really stupid.

Happy Anniversary to my husband. (A day early.) Thank you for being the one who always shows up, even when no one else does. I would never have made it this far without you, ever holding my hand.

Alive Together
by Lisel Mueller

Speaking of marvels, I am alive
together with you, when I might have been
alive with anyone under the sun,
when I might have been Abelard’s woman
or the whore of a Renaissance pop
or a peasant wife with not enough food
and not enough love, with my children
dead of the plague. I might have slept
in an alcove next to the man
with the golden nose, who poked it
into the business of stars,
or sewn a starry flag
for a general with wooden teeth.
I might have been the exemplary Pocahontas
or a woman without a name
weeping in Master’s bed
for my husband, exchanged for a mule,
my daughter, lost in a drunken bet.
I might have been stretched on a totem pole
to appease a vindictive god
or left, a useless girl-child,
to die on a cliff. I like to think
I might have been Mary Shelley
in love with a wrong-headed angel,
or Mary’s friend. I might have been you.
This poem is endless, the odds against us are endless,
our chances of being alive together
statistically nonexistent;
still we have made it, alive in a time
when rationalists in square hats
and hatless Jehovah’s Witnesses
agree it is almost over,
alive with our lively children
who–but for endless ifs–
might have missed out on being alive
together with marvels and follies
and longings and lies and wishes
and error and humor and mercy
and journeys and voices and faces
and colors and summers and mornings
and knowledge and tears and chance.

The Hallmark Horror of Mother’s Day

It was just a few weeks before Mother’s Day last year when the realization finally dawned on my 14-year-old son that as eldest heir to the Buchholz Empire he would be lucky to come into twenty bucks and a nice used set of dishes upon reaching the age of majority. Raised to be a free-thinker and to weigh in with his opinion where and when he sees fit, he shared his belief without malice that perhaps my time as a Mother would nowadays be better spent in taking a job outside the home so I could more easily pay for his eventual car, college education and some extra video games along the way. He believes in planning ahead.

It was something of a ding to the Mommy-Ego, though, much as I tried not to take it personally. The truth is I’m pretty content to be a mother and very little else. I’m at peace with the fact that it often involves a great deal of thankless cleaning up after other human beings, that it means being at beck and call whether it be night or noon, and treating most everyone’s needs as superior to mine in every way. I don’t often feel the need to play the Guilt or Martyr cards that are so tempting for a person in my position at times. Mostly because I do feel appreciated on the average day and I know how lucky I am to be here. I also know what my husband and I have chosen to sacrifice in order to live our lives this way. I figure I signed up for this job, and it wasn’t just for the fame, fortune and glamor that goes with it.

And when I lose track of myself, I remember how Sidney Poitier turned the way I looked at the parent/child dynamic upside down and gave me my parenting motto twenty years ago when I watched his character in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner say to his father,

“You tell me what rights I’ve got or haven’t got, and what I owe to you for what you’ve done for me. Let me tell you something. I owe you nothing! If you carried that bag a million miles, you did what you were supposed to do! Because you brought me into this world. And from that day you owed me everything you could ever do for me like I will owe my son if I ever have another.”

Epiphany. In fact, I can honestly say that I’ve spent every day of motherhood at least trying to live to that ideal.

But then comes Mother’s Day.

With strong difficulties pervading the relationship with my own mother, the dreaded walk down the card aisle every year sifting through “I’m so lucky!” and “I’m proud to be just like you!” sentiments was always something of a painful experience already. In trying with little success to actually buy something for a woman who would weigh, examine and pore over my eventual selection with a magnifying glass checking for proof of love and other hidden meanings in color choice and scent, the joy of giving was long ago lost.

And the skeptic, alive and well inside of me, was always a little inclined to think of Mother’s Day as just another fascist scam. Well, really, I know it is. Perpetrated on mothers and the mothered alike, Hallmark rings in and raises the stakes on our natural inclinations toward self-imposed guilt and imaginary obligation. The Evil Coalition of Florists and Greeting Card Overlords, making us believe that we need that bouquet in order to feel appreciated, that we have to call or send a card on just this one particular day or else be damned to hell for an ungrateful child or a thoughtless spouse. I know this like I know that Christmas has turned in to an obscene holiday of excess and greed, but I still insist upon believing that Santa and I can use it’s powers for good, that I can bend it’s perversions to my own use.

But in years past, truly, once my mother was dealt with and I would once again remember that “Mother” meant “Me, Too,” I have always loved the homemade cards, the half cooked breakfasts and the pink sparkly pig necklaces that I’ve received from my progeny each year on this day. I embrace the beauty of their love in translation, with no magnifying glass or scales needed to tell me its worth, or what any of it says about mine.

Last year, though, turned out a little bit differently. The kids were older, collectively, and we’d been trying something new by giving them quite a bit of money for their allowances each month but also making them responsible for certain “necessities” that might come up for themselves. In this way they can blow all of the proverbial rent money on video games if they choose and not wind up homeless; the hope is that they can find their own balance in the world of material wants and needs, one that suits them specifically – before it’s real rent that’s on the line. So far for them it’s just meant making due with holey jeans and too tight shorts from last summer in favor of the newest Xbox 360 game, but that’s cool. They’re also responsible for their own gift-buying, though, and while I dropped a few hints and reminders on the way to Mother’s Day, I was pretty confident they were in favor of blowing it off.

I also thought I was probably okay with that. I was wrong. When I walked out of my bedroom that morning and into what appeared to be Just Another Day, I was a little crushed. Suddenly leaving them to their own devices or ignoring the commercial tyranny of the holiday didn’t seem like such a great idea. I wanted my freaking bouquet. Hadn’t I earned it?

The truth is that we all know that we should be celebrating and appreciating our mothers – and everyone else that we love – on a daily basis instead of once a year. But we’re human. We forget. We get busy, we get tired. So it’s not wrong to have a Mother’s Day to remind us to celebrate someone important. Where something like a Hallmark holiday damages us, though, is when we let it tell us what shape our love should take and what we can expect it to look like when it’s given to us. When we start relying on someone else’s shorthand for love and appreciation, we start missing the real love being offered to us, raw and true.

Love almost never comes in the shape, color, or scent that we were expecting. And in a household where no one has ever been expected to prove or quantify their love, sometimes it looks like just another day.

Addendum – This year – Mother’s Day 2010 – we hit our stride, I think. The kids kept their money and instead we spent a family day exploring some of the local countryside, adventuring and playing. With camera in hand and a new rule in place – on Mother’s Day I get to take as many pictures of my kids as I want and they don’t get to complain – I couldn’t have been happier. So this is the other thing I learned – while its important to be able to recognize and accept the love that’s offered to us in the shape and form in which it’s offered, it’s our right and our responsibility to teach the people around us how best to love us, too. – KB

You know you’re a Star Wars geek of astronomical proportions when you discover that your daughter spent a certain portion of her childhood thinking that you had actually been married to Luke Skywalker before you met and married her father. I might not be a Jedi, but in my daughter’s eyes, at least for a small period of time, I was a Jedi’s ex-wife.

Oh, I seriously hearted Luke Skywalker, it’s true. Even when he was nothing but a whiny farm boy headed to Tosche Station to pick up some power converters. When he gazed off into the distance in the light of the setting suns of Tatooine the way that he did, with his hair blowing wistfully and his heart filled with longing for something amazing to happen, I thought that no one on planet earth could possibly understand me better. And then, of course, later on, when he was all damaged and complicated on account of having his hand cut off by his evil father – not to mention all those inappropriate feelings toward his own sister – the boy had issues just right for my Savior complex.

And he had that sexy mind control thing going for him, too, along with the intriguing possibilities of that mechanical hand.

I watched every movie, collected every book (even did an oral report on one of them in the sixth grade, which I’m sure did wonders for my already questionable popularity rating at that time) and got super defensive when my older brother helpfully pointed out that the whole thing happened “long ago in a galaxy far, far away” which, he seemed to think, made the chances of actually running across Jedi in Noble, Oklahoma circa 1984 pretty unlikely.

So I suppose you could say we have history. But Luke and I were never actually married.

Not really.

An open letter to my son on his birthday.

To Nicholas David, bold and brave and ten years old, newly minted -

Ten years ago, a ten pound baby born with surprising ease and little fuss. Born into a new millennium, into a family that still barely knew what kind of organism it was to become or how it should like to behave; born to parents with price tags still on, who bubbled with inexperience and terror but a deep need for you.

I was afraid your sister, 2 1/2, would resent being displaced as baby of the family. But you were her baby, too, and it was me she sometimes resented, for getting so much of your attention. Your brother just wished you would be quieter. Often, he still does. But he appreciates that your birthday is like a second birthday for him, since your interests remain largely the same.

Times were uncertain ten years past, our fortunes doubly so. If we had known how well you can subsist on only tomato soup and peanut butter sandwiches, we might not have worried quite so much. Now I worry that by your next birthday you’ll be down to eating only tortilla chips and Oreos.

Ten years ago, Nickle, you didn’t just join this family, you annexed it. You changed the rhythm and flow; you rock the boat, eternally.

This past year has been computer filled for you, sweet cyborg child. I always said you were born with a computer mouse in your hand and the will to use it, but this year you officially passed my technical knowledge and now you use terms that I don’t always entirely understand. You build and play on things like Garry’s Mod, you watch videos on YouTube that give you more and better ideas of what you can do next and you have best friends all over the planet. (“Mom, I got my British friend to say ‘bloody hell!’ and it was epic!”) If ever there was a child of the future, it is you. I’ve never met anyone who thinks as far outside of the box. Sometimes I’m not sure you’re aware that a box exists.

You like to sleep on the sofa in pretzel shapes, you argue with your brother over Modern Warfare 2 and the Yu-Gi-Oh card game and you stomp away in a fury only to return to playing with him ten minutes later. Your anger burns hot but swift and you aren’t one for holding grudges. You still don’t have much use for sarcasm – which tends to be stock in trade for the rest of your family. But you have a sense of humor that is loony and sweet, and when I make a joke you find particularly pleasing, you beam at me as though you’d invented me yourself.

You approach every deal presented to you by your loved ones with suspicion, and every one pitched to you by a stranger with enthusiasm. Your sister is still your best friend. You are ever bold and passionate, but with a newfound shyness that breaks my heart a little. I hope it will temper you and help you find your balance, I hope it won’t dull your shine. You have an innate sense of your own worth, though, I think, and a compassion that is surprising sometimes in its depth and intuition.

In a family it isn’t just every person that ages individually, the family ages together as an entity. The good side to this is that at ten years old, you have freedoms and respect and privileges that your older brother only dreamed of at the same age, and you have parents who occasionally know what they’re doing. The downside is that no one takes you to see Alvin and the Chipmunks the Squeakquel when it’s in theaters. I’m sorry that we didn’t – we really should have. I fear that we’ve drug you along behind us at times, and I promise to try to honor your speeds a little better in this coming year.

When you were born, someone I used to know – someone I loved very much at the time – didn’t approve at all of your existence. Two parents should mean no more than two children; this was the perfect family in an ideal world to her – anything more than that wasn’t just greedy and selfish, it was harmful to the emotional development of all involved. She thought of family as a straight line, I think, drawn from one side to the other, grown ups vs. kids, us against them, a one way road of life’s blood pouring ever downward, never to be replenished. She believed that by adding you we would somehow all be less, because there would be less parent to go around. This person wasn’t malicious – just misguided and very ignorant about what makes a family and how it works when it does.

Not that I knew much better about such things at the time, but being a Third myself, it wasn’t exactly a leap of faith for me. I had good reason to believe that the addition of me to my family didn’t exactly have to spell gloom and doom for all involved. And if it did mean a little less for my siblings – less attention, maybe, less material goods – then they were missing what I had to offer.

We have never mistaken what you have to offer, Nicholas David. Without you, I would not be me. Khy would not be Khy and Storm would not be Storm. (I would also say that your Dad would not be your Dad, but that doesn’t come out sounding quite right. You get my drift, though.) More than that, our family would never have been complete. Until you came along, we were unfinished. Every sentence ended in dot-dot-dot.

You were the punctuation that made us real.

Love,
Mom

Photo: My Dad, Storm, me and Nicky, 2000

Tomorrow my youngest child turns double digits. I despise mothers who make every seminal moment in their child’s life about themselves first and foremost, so tomorrow will be about Nicky. Tomorrow will be about celebrating ten years of beautiful life, honored to be at his side. Tomorrow will be his triumph of being, his glory of creation, his world changing existence, and my utter amazement as his humble witness.

Today though, is for me. Ten years ago today I carried my last child for the last day. Today I’m picking through photographs of moments gone and people we’ll never be again, and I’m feeling a little sad, a little sorry for myself.

This poem cracks me open every time I read it:

On Turning Ten
by Billy Collins

The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I’m coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light–
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.

It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.

Bonus points for the edible eyeball factor. Seriously though, if I got this from someone I would laugh. And then, as the implications sank in, I would be scared. Who, exactly, is this marketed to? Besides me, and my gruesome yet quirky and strangely winsome sense of humor?

Perhaps it’s meant to woo the women who pick “Every Breath You Take” as their wedding song.

A few of my favorite pictures from our holidays:

1. Playing the PS3, 2. Indoor Lights, 3. Unwrapping the First Present
4. Decorating the Tree, 5. Winning Tongue, 6. Cheesy Happy
7. Angel Bokeh, 8. Unwrapping, 9. What Wouldn’t Fit in the Little Box
10. The Mysterious Little Box, 11. I Don’t Know What He Was Doing Here, 12. Ho Ho Ho

The locally owned Pepsi factory nearby always puts up an elaborate light and figure display, and its been our tradition to drive out to see it for years now. Mostly it’s just sweetly kitschy, but there are a few rather controversial images we’ve noticed over the years -

Like how blow up dolls spend Christmas.

And the sinister no-faced Santa standing a bit apart and above, letting us all see what happened when Rudolph crossed him one too many times as he waves that familiar red nose back and forth in savage victory.