Dear Jack,

Time slips away much more rapidly when things are good. I'm tired, wrung out, and happy and a week is over, like that. Wash dishes, prep dinner, read books, play games, lie down, get up, listen, shout, cuddle, sing. It all tumbles around into a span of seven days (or 30) and you are a boy and I am still a mom but I look older and the dishes are waiting and I meant to sign you up for that thing but I didn't so we'll just wait until next year and we'll have meatless dinner because no matter how many times I ask you to close the freezer it doesn't jog my memory to the chicken which must thaw. You ate the onions that you chopped yourself and you think it's hilarious when people pretend to struggle with simple things. You used to say "fumb" and now you say "thingers" and it's one of only a handful of things you get wrong but it's so right I'll never correct you - the correcting comes and it always comes quicker than I expect. All those parenting tricks that you denied me a couple of years ago work now, like mirroring your feelings, validating your struggles, offering you rational alternatives to the irrational thing you want. Four is an age of wonder, discovery, and self-discipline. You don't have it yet (psst...neither do I), but you've opened that door, apologizing sincerely for wrongs, anticipating the consequences of your actions, saying wishful things about being together forever but starting to understand that living things die and that dying is real. You talk a lot about death and I talk a lot about wanting to raise you to understand the natural cycle of life but in those moments it's just talk because I want to shelter you and shelter myself from loss. You're curious and I'm committed and we talk and talk and I answer through tears sometimes because I am learning to live with the questions and the realities, too. You ask me if all mommies take shots and take medicine and I tell you some do but you aren't satisfied with that so I know more questions are coming and I'm happy that you are a compassionate person. You busted up your face and we had it glued back together but I got impatient and pulled off your bandaid, with it the glue and half of your eyebrow and it's the kind of story I'll always tell because I'll always feel terrible. When I apologized to you in the dark that night, you said "you're always so nice to me, Mommy, it's okay." Breaking and healing my heart in one fell swoop - you're really good at that. It's in those moments I realize how sacred the trust is between child and parent and it reveals so much about so many people and how that trust can help deliver you into your big, adult world, or how it can, when broken, keep you down, keep you static. May I never, never, never take it for granted and may you never, never, never forget it. Being your mom is the best thing I've ever done and learning to accept that is going to make the rest of my life better, I just know it. It isn't about what I was doing before, or what I thought I might do while parenting, or what I imagine will happen when things change in the future. It's okay that I am your mom and that is my life's work and when I see you trying new things and speaking kindly I feel like I'm doing a bang-up job. I couldn't love you more than I love you and that's a fact, Jack.