5:20am
You are snoring to my right. Even today on your birthday, I worry. Are you happy? Do you know how much I love you? I ask you this all the time and you tease back with your fingers; first just three, (“more!” I say), then just five, (“more!” I say), then two full hands, (“even more than that!” I say). That smile. Oh, what I’d do for that smile, do you know?
You are stacking up lore in our family, but I want you to know that those are just nuggets of our love for you. They are sound bytes that you’ll think you remember, as we retell and reminisce with years that pass. But really, I want you to know – I need you to know – that our experience of you is not you. We are blessed to be by your side as you grow, and we will collect our favorite moments like precious stones, but that glint in your eye belongs only to you.
Everything about you, I adore. It’s impossible to reduce you to traits and lore, because you are the sun and the moon and the air and “the G-d inside you,” as you say. I know it’s too much, the amount I love you. It’s too much to count on our hands, and it’s too much for you when it makes you feel seen. But just know it’s there for you, always, ok? In the darkness or light, years beyond my life, I just ask that you tuck my love into that fire inside of you. If the flame simmers, remember your reverence for me, and reignite yourself with all my love, because that’s whats it’s there for. It’s your home, and you can always, ALWAYS, come home.
Written by Melissa Lipnick, a writer and artist in Cleveland, Ohio.