"Today is your birthday. Today you are you. There is no one alive that is you-er than you." ' Dr. Seuss
I remember worrying, fourteen years ago, when I was pregnant with my second child, that I wouldn’t, couldn’t, love another child as much as I loved my first. I’ve never really said that out loud before. But it was the truth. It was a worry. The first one was, well, the first one, and everything was so amazing, so wonderful, so full of excitement.
It took a couple of years before we even entertained the possibility of another, before we could even consider doing it again and then, as the days got closer and closer to the moment when he would arrive, well, I started to panic. Was there going to be enough room, (in my heart, I mean)?
It seems so silly now.
“Your heart will just get bigger,” my girlfriend reassured me, speaking from experience. She had been through it three times.
And it did.
There was a moment, though. About two weeks into it, when we were still getting to know each other, we got sick. Stuffy nose, scratchy throat, up all night because you can’t breathe kind of sick. And what I remember about that time was that I sat in my bed holding this new small person in my arms and we cried, both of us, until we couldn’t cry any longer. He, because he felt so miserable and me because there was nothing I could do to make it better. It was a moment.
But it was the only one.
Number one had been independent. He barely looked over his shoulder when he marched off to school and to this day he’d much rather be anywhere than spend a quiet evening at home.
But this one was different. For Mother’s Day when he was 3 or 4, he made me a t-shirt with his picture on it. I pulled it on and there he was with that big, beautiful, baby toothed smile, right over my heart. It was a message. We were connected.
“What’s wrong, Mom?” he’ll ask even before I realize that something is.
It’s eerie.
He loves animals. When he was 5 we had a local woman come with a collection of unusual animals for the kids to see. There was a very large boa and a fenec fox with radar-like ears and a small, very patient hedgehog who rolled up in a ball as he tolerated the little hands touching his quills. When the party ended, the woman brought out a few beanbag animals as a memento. The birthday boy chose the hedgehog, of course, and promptly named him Hedgie.
Hedgie went everywhere with us, to restaurants, on planes, to the movies and on vacations. And Hedgie had friends. Lots of friends. Mice and cats and dogs and rabbits and penguins. Lots and lots of penguins.
The walls in his room are lined with penguins. Big penguins and small penguins, penguins with hats and scarves and bow ties. Penguins that sit straight up and penguins that flop over and every one of them has a name. When he was younger he would sit on the floor of his bedroom and play baseball for hours with his animals. They hit and pitched and scored runs and they would even get each other out. When he wasn’t looking, I would peak into his room and watch, quietly, so as not to disturb the magic.
And every year a penguin made its way to the top of the birthday cake.
“Do you want a penguin on your cake this year?” I asked him the other day as I was preparing for his birthday party.
“Not this year, Mom.”
Sigh.
On his eighth birthday, he came up to me and put his hands on my face, holding it tenderly. He sensed my melancholy. Time was moving too quickly.
“Don’t worry Mom. For you, I’ll always be seven.”
Promises, promises.
Happy Birthday Penguin Boy! Your Mama loves you very, very much.