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

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

I am going to love the hell out of you.

Even if it kills me.

Sincerely,
Kelly