To my precious Pierce on the eve of your first birthday…
It’s been a busy year, my love. A very busy year. So busy in fact, that it took plugging in an external hard drive, mustering some bravery, and pouring through the unavoidable monsoon of mama emotions that go hand-in-hand with hospital photos, to remember what it was like meeting you. But I remember now. I’m so grateful for photography. Even shadowy flash photography--and that’s something, coming from a natural light photographer—if it means remembering life’s stand-still moments. It’s sad that the magnitude of moments as big as meeting my own babies manage to fade with time... I need to take even more photos of you than I already do. Your chill-dude sweetness never gets old. Welcoming you was exhausting. I know, I know, all the mamas out there are exclaiming, “Psh! Duh. Never was a birth not exhausting!" But yours was especially. It was overwhelmingly so wonderful having you placed on my chest that I remember not being able to hold you up, not even to look at you. Mama was tired, dude. Really tired and really, really relieved. And happy! Happier than the word "happy" can capture. And yet in that happier-than-happy moment, I didn’t know the half of what was to come. You have continued to gift happiness to me (and your daddy and your big brother and sister) every day since then.
You don’t expect much. You like food quite a lot. You like your people. You love it when I sing to you but you don’t demand it unless you're sick and even then you’re sweet about it. You find your daddy to be very funny, especially when he’s dancing. (Me too.) You enjoy wrestling with Sanders and laughing with Winslet. You take a lot of abuse from your siblings, more all the time, now that you’re mobile. They admonish and even push you down, and still you show them grace and shortly thereafter are back to sharing your happy spirit with them.
You are a joy. You are so much of my daily "happy".
I didn’t know in that moment captured in the hospital upon meeting you, all that it would someday signify. I had longed to meet your sweet face, kiss your cheeks and discover if your nose was like Sanders’ or like Winslet’s, and yet once your were on my chest, all I could do was close my eyes, rest, and savor you, with me. Still a year into life with you, you are teaching me this lesson and it’s a favorite of mine. You remind me to slow.down and chill out, to work to spread happiness despite life’s circumstances and to savor life’s simple things. Your enthusiasm for the discovery of any two objects colliding and making an interesting, impressive or new sound is enough to light up a room. When it happens, buddy, when you find a new sound, I notice. Life whirlwinds around you and I’m sure I miss a lot of moments and things, but your sounds and your joy, I see and I feel. Your banging, your smile, your twinkling eyes and your gleeful little exclamations make me smile, they make my heart soar, and they make me ever so grateful for you.
On that note, I’m off to savor falling asleep with my 11 month old baby softly snoring in the room at the end of the hall. Tomorrow you turn 1, Piercy bebe, but we don’t rush these things...
