Dear Kids,
Today was a special day. SBR turned 11.
That’s right, 11 years ago yesterday, as Ima was getting ready for bed, it began. Well, I won’t go into the gory details, but suffice it to say that we left the apartment around 3:30 in the morning, got to the hospital at 4, and SBR was born 34 minutes later. It was probably one of the most exciting and scariest nights of my life. What was I supposed to do with a baby? How was I supposed to take care of a baby? I didn’t know anything about swaddling or burping or diaper changing. All I could think of was what had I gotten myself into? But SBR was here, and there was no giving her back, so Ima and I learned through trial and error…more error than anything else.
As the years passed, we got better at it (I think anyway), and hopefully as you read this, you’ll agree there were more good times than bad. You’ll no doubt look back and say “yea, they were good parents, and now I understand why they did what they did.” Perhaps you’re reading this blog to my grandchildren, and Ima and I have been vindicated.
But that’s all so far in the future for me right now…SBR just turned 11. That seems unreal to me. And apparently to SBR too. All three of you (as do most kids) look forward to your birthday, to celebrating another year of life on Planet Earth. Honestly, I think it’s more the special treatment, going out to eat (or having something special made at home), and the gifts you look forward to. It’s not really the anniversary of your birth or celebrating another year that you didn’t die from the dumb things you did throughout the year that should have proven Darwin was right but somehow you survived and disproved him (or at least proved de-evolution is a real thing). And I think it hit you, SBR, that you’re getting older, and as you get older, you grow up and aren’t a little girl anymore. I don’t want to embarrass you, but you cried that you didn’t want to turn 11. Sadly, it was inevitable.
There is nothing we can do to turn back time, but we don’t need to mark birthdays as another year gone; quite the opposite. Birthdays are a sort of purgatory where you’re no longer last year’s age, but neither are you the next year’s age quite yet. After all, you always wake up the next day and realize that you don’t actually feel any older. Birthdays, then, are a time to reflect on everything that has happened to us in the past year, how we grew (physically, mentally, intellectually, and emotionally), and it’s a chance to consider the coming year and the possibilities that await us.
As Humpty Dumpty points out in Through the Looking Glass, you only have one birthday a year, and while children long for their birthdays and count down the days (or is that just the three of you?) birthdays shouldn’t be taken lightly. As I said, they mark that another year has passed. That’s a year you won’t get back. So, , I hope you are already practicing this, but if not, remember what I always told you: savor begin the age you are and hold on to it until literally the last possible moment, because you will never be that age again no matter how much you may want to stay that way. It has passed, and you’re the next age. And that’s OK. I’m not saying stop being young or stop being silly or stop being immature…none of that has anything to do with age. All I’m saying is that you will only be 11 once, and for only for 1 year at that, so enjoy every one of those 31,536,000 seconds.
Love,
Aba
