Happy Birthday!

Yesterday was my Baby's 22nd birthday..   I know, I can't believe it either..  I tell people I had him when I was nine years old.  They don't believe me either...  To me it seems only yesterday that he was learning to walk, learning to talk - taking that first school bus trip to kindergarten..  Like many of us, I find myself asking the question that is never really answered.. "where does this time go??"   I get reflective and emotional on these days..  I remember so vividly the day he was born.  I remember what happened moment by moment as though someone hit the rewind button on the VCR - And year after year I relive these moments..  These are the things in our lives that we don't forget, we cherish them and remember them always.  These memories are burned into the core of our very beings for the all of time..  I remember the details, the smells, the colors.  It was a bright, sunny day..  He was born at 5 in the afternoon (4:56 actually), the sun was shining, it was crisp and so very clear outside, everything smelled so clean, so new..  Mums were in bloom everywhere I looked... I've come to the conclusion that my memories are like I always wished they would be - I wish I could bottle these moments, these memories so I can take them out whenever I need to relive them - these memories ARE bottled up and stored - in my head of course - and they are bottled up there ready for me to hold them and cherish them as I do today... 

I take time to reflect on these special days..  To look at old photographs and read old letters that he has written to me in school over the years.  To see his "works of art" that for many years graced our refrigerator..  hahaha - we STILL have "works of art" that he's done proudly displayed on that museum of a refrigerator of ours!  He is in college studying to be a writer - a sports writer to be exact - and I have "articles" he had written in high school and a poem that he had written just for "Mom" still on that old refrigerator, yellowed and crispy - memories I just can't remove.. Not yet, anyway..  Maybe with a new fridge, but not yet...

He is away at school and very independent - I would have it no other way.  That has always been the prayer of my heart.  That I be given the grace to prepare and to send my chicks out of their nest so that they can soar on their own -  be free, and be ready to face this world in confidence and strength...  They are my "Babies" - and they always will be..  But, they are also men.  And I am so proud of the man my Baby has grown into being.. 

Happy Birthday, Angel..  May God bless you today and always....

Until next time!