Year Four

My dearest Poo,

Today, you turned four years old.

Four!

I remember the day of your birth so clearly that it is hard to believe that already, 48 months have passed. So much happened in the short time you’ve been alive; you lived in one apartment, two houses and two states, you grew 22.5-inches and gained 35 pounds.

You learned to walk, talk, pee in the potty and write your name. You can count to 27, and you know how to put your own clothes on, even though you think I don’t know that.

I know.

You witnessed one birth and grieved over one death, and tonight you ate your fourth piece of birthday cake.

Oh, my girl, my sweetheart, my darling!

Your curls, unruly though they are, make me catch my breath. Your brown eyes, like your vocabulary, are spectacular. Your eyelashes cast shadows on your rich, milky skin, and when you cry your bottom lip makes my soul burst into a million small pieces.

Watching you grow is an honor and a privledge, one I try never to take for granted. Your father and I made a very specific choice one spring afternoon when you were very small, and since that day it has been my blessing to wake you every morning and to spend all of my hours with you.

Lately, I feel like I don’t get to see you that often, although in theory we are together from sun-up to sun-down, not to mention all the wee hours in between. That’s why I am secretly happy when you burst into our room at 3 a.m., eyes wild with some fantastical dream:

I dreamt that rocket ate a sandwich! I dreamt that Wal-Mart was out of Oreos!

You pull my arm and I reach for you, and in an instant you are beside me. It is the only time, these late-night cuddles, when you are still in my arms. You sigh and relax, safe and sound, and for a few hours I can pretend you are still my baby.

This week you told your daddy that I am the best grown-up in the world, after he teased you that perhaps I was too naughty to attend your birthday party. The indignation and sincerity of that one simple, powerful statement went straight to the center of my being.

It is a moment I will carry in my pocket for the rest of my life.

My sweet girl, the road ahead of you is paved with pitfalls. The world is a wonderful, hurtful place filled with moments of pure beauty interspersed with heartbreak. You, my darling, are the crystallization of every gorgeous wound in the universe—for though I bore you, held you and raised you up, one day you will leave me.

As is good and right. It is as it should be.

And yet.

And yet.

I watch the years slip by like so many pearls on a chain and I see before me the day you will leave me behind, with only a backward glance of those brown eyes—oh! my dead father’s eyes in your face—to sustain me.

But today.

I have today, when you are four, and all is right with the world.

My dear heart, my precious first-born, my only daughter. I love you very, very much.

Forever yours,

Mommy