To My Erik

You're six today, my Ookie Man. [I suppose someday you won't let me call you that, but just so you know, I'm going to get away with it for as long as I can].

You are everything I imagined when I thought of having children (well, the few shallow things I imagined before I actually had kids, that is); your blond hair and blue eyes are as fine and bright as the day you were born...and the other day in your eyes I caught that perfect blue-green combination that I fell in love with when I looked into your daddy's eyes all those years ago, the kind of blue-green that changes to perfectly match whatever color blue or green you're wearing and still steals my heart.

Thankfully, you've also brilliantly filled in the gaps of all the many profound and important things I never thought to plan for or expect or consider back when I imagined having a son. The way you view and experience the world challenges my views and experiences every day. And trite as it may sound, you really have have helped me grow so much as a mother and a person. You're still teaching me about life and motherhood [and patience] daily and I know that certainly won't stop anytime soon.

I love your imagination [even though it's hard most days to get you to exit that imagination mode even for a few seconds], and your incredible, beautiful mind blows me away day after day. I love the innovations you love to create--strung up contraptions around the house, 3-D tank templates drawn and folded from a sheet of white paper, or something as obscure as an object you observed in a computer game (I was in awe when I realized that paper craft was a bundle of dynomite you'd copied from the game). I love how you overwrote my assumptions of your reading level with the story you spontaneously wrote the day you came home from school with your first set of sight words. And even though the amount of time you spend building legos instead of getting ready is inversly proportional to our chance of actually making it to school on time, and even though I don't always love when your bizarre contraptions pop up right in my path, your creations have earned you every bit of your name, Ookie the Engineer.  Your mind continually devises the kind of things mine can only marvel at. It's pretty stinking impressive...and it's oh so clear that your soul was created with the kind of unbelievably intricate divine inspiration that God likes to use when He's showing off.

On the subject of marveling...six seems so old to me. Especially when it comes to you. I'm still getting used to you being five. And adjusting to the fact that you're in kindergarten. And grasping the fact that you're mastering this whole big-kid life that I've slowly accepted as your sister's world, but I'm not ready to picture you in. If I've learned anything, though, it's that time doesn't wait for me to be ready. I told Daddy right before I left that you just looked so old to me all of a sudden. I stared at you that day and tried not to shake my head in denial as you tried to open a new box of granola bars so you could pack your snack in your backpack a whole day in advance. You were oblivious to my watery eyes; you focused with determination on that stubborn carboard flap for a long while before getting too frustrated and asking me to help. So I swallowed the lump in my throat and helped you. Then I took a picture of you so I wouldn't forget just how how big little you looked right in that moment.

I also discovered the other week that you had slipped three snacks in your backpack, so you could inhale as much of them as possible at school and then come home and tell me you needed to finish your snack (all the while pretending it was snack #1 not snack #3). You're a crafty one, you little snack monger. But I'm still ahead of you (for now).

But today, I'm not with you. I'll say it: missing your birthday is killing me. Not that I want to miss anyone's birthday, and not the Army gave me much choice in the matter...but if I had to miss one I definitely didn't want it to be yours. I'm sorry I'm not there to hold you in my arms and click through pictures with you, together reliving all those first moments of snuggling all 7lb.7oz, 21inches of sweet little you for the first time on September 22 at 2:22am.

Tonight I wanted to be the one to make your birthday dinner of gnocchi with tomato sauce that you've requested (and prayed for) every night at bedtime prayers for a year. I wanted to make (okay, maybe buy) your cake and light the candles and sing Happy Brithday to you all day long and be the one to give you that Jake and the Neverland Pirates card I picked out with the foldable pirate hat you can wear. I bet it looks awesome on you.

Instead, I sit here, 1,631miles away (which is 1,631 miles too far) wishing I was there to watch you blow out that sixth candle, and still wishing with my heart that you get your birthday wish.

It is every bit as heartwrenching as I imagined it might be, and then some.

But my only consolation is that it does feel like this--that it is so very hard on my heart because I love you so very, endlessly much with all my heart. It quiets the doubts and fears that sometimes creep into my mind, wondering if--as the mama of someone as unique and special as you--maybe I have not loved you like you need or deserve. But feeling this, I know my love could not possibly be any stronger or better, my son--that I'm sure of now.

I hope your gnocchi is cooked to perfection and I can't wait to make you more when I get back. Happy 6th Birthday, my Erik. I love you beyond measure and then some.

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An interview with Erik, 5.96 years old (aka 2 weeks ago):

Foverite color: Green.
Favorite food: Pizza.
Favorite drink: Chocolate milk.
Favorite song: I don't really have one.
Favorite animal: a zebra!
Favorite clothes: My superhero shirt.
Favorite outdoor activity: I want to put a big tub outside to race boats in!
Favorite game: Banana wizards. (Me: "How do you play that?") It's a kind of tag. Someone's a wizard, the other people are humans, the wizard tries to tag the humans and if he does it turns the human into a banana. But if you're not you can stand in the rocks and be safe. (Note to self: don't get frozen into a banana).
Favorite Sport: Baseball.
Favorite Hobby: Playing with my dart gun and legos.
FavoriteTV show: Jake and the Neverland Pirates.
Favorite Movie: Wall-E.
Favorite family activities: Water balloon fights.
Favorite place to go on vacation: The beach!
What do you want to be when you grow up? A SUPER Spy.
What are you looking forward to most about being 6? Being a toasted marshmallow with the top on fire for Halloween!