Dear Ben,
Today you turned five. I wish sometimes I could capture you, just as you are right now, and tuck it into a bottle, so that when you are 14 years old and sullen I can remember just the way you howl when I don’t give you a hug and kiss when I leave for work, or the way you attack my legs when I come home. I wish I could remember exactly the way you look when you ask me to play cars with you, or the way you sound when you describe the movie Cars for the umpteenth time. I know, however, that these memories will fade, because it is hard now to picture you at 6 months or 2 years or even 3 years old, and that wasn’t that long ago.
There are some things I want to write down so I won’t forget them. The way you run with your arms held down at your sides. The fact that, in one moment, you are terrified we might see any part of you when you get in the bath, and the next moment you shouting, “I’m naked!” and streaking through my house. I will miss your obsessions with pirates, superheroes and villians, including Darn Vader and Yoga. I will remember how your grandpa decided to wear you out and ran around and around the house with you, and how 2 hours later dad was snoring in a chair and you were still going.
You have a lot of energy and you’re smart. You use big words that surprise me, and I constantly worry that you’re going to get beat up a lot in school for that. Because you’re exactly like me; you’re the kid who is like me. I knew it from the very beginning, and let me tell you how hard that is, IT IS SO HARD OH MY GOD. It’s like watching a slasher flick, where you are screaming, “Don’t go in the basement! Don’t open that…behind you! It’s behind you!” but the film keeps running and everything plays itself out like you expect it to and you are completely powerless. That’s just what it’s like and sometimes it is a little unbearable, because I love you like crazy and the first time I saw a group of mean, bullying 18 month olds beating up on your 12-month-old self it was all I could do from WIPING THE PLAYGROUND WITH THOSE ROTTEN INFANTS who dared to touch my baby. And in that instant, I knew it would be just the same for you as it was for me in school. You play it cool, Ben, but I know.
Maya is like Marti. Quiet, yet rock solid and determined. She wouldn’t even say anything to the 18-month-old bullies, she’d just wait until their backs were turned, take their toys, fake an injury and start crying, and get a day of luxury while the toddlers got the time-out chair. I don’t worry as much about Maya; she’s all Marti, and in a way it’s a relief. I don’t know what the future holds for her. Marti will be the one to worry. But you, Ben, you I worry about. I worry about whether or not I’m doing a good enough job. I worry about whether you are happy. But most of all, I worry about myself, because I know the best way to help you is to change myself, and that’s hard.
You are five today. I remember my 5th birthday, as does Marti, so now we are in scary territory as parents, because you can remember this well enough to recount it to a shrink one day. I hope we don’t screw up too much, just for the record, because we’re crazy about you. And you, my precocious five-year-old son with his too-big words, are a great kid. I get compliments about you, compliments that make me beam, but I can never really take credit. Because it’s all you, Ben. It’s just who you are. And somehow, that makes me prouder than if it was something I did.
Happy 5th birthday Ben. Don’t grow up too fast. I’m not ready for another year, and neither is Yoga.
