Birthdays

I'm thinking about My Boys. They each had a birthday this week! Tommy turned nine and five days later Scotty turned four.

Five years and five days separates them, but to me it's just the blink of an eye.




They love each other so much, and Tommy loves kids...he'd be happy if we had a house full. (No.) But, it's also true that he was anxious before Scotty came, and sometimes jealous of him even now.

To help alleviate his fears, I often talk to Tommy about all the things I love about him, so he'll know that none of that has changed. When he's feeling particularly peckish, I remind him that he will always be special, because he made me a mommy. That's something he doesn't have to share with anybody. And as much as we love Scotty, I was already a mommy when I met him, and I will always be thankful to Tommy for 'giving' me that.


And Scotty did something special too, but differently...I learned a lot about a mommy's love when he was born. I knew that loving Tommy was more profound than anything I had ever felt before, and I did worry that I would never be able to love Scotty as much. But when I met him, I realized, a mommy's love isn't limited. It grows and grows. It grows as much to include more children, as it does to love even more the children we have. Every time I think I love my kids more than is humanly possible, I realize that I actually love them just a little bit more than that already. It grows every day, and in every way.



Scotty's love story is a bittersweet one, from the beginning. I held him, enraptured from the start, unable to take my eyes off of him...but I'd already been through this before, and I already knew how much I would 'miss' him, even as he became more of the 'him' that he is meant to be. By the time I was aware that my time with Tommy, with me as the center of his world, with him as the air I breathed, would eventually come to a close, Scotty was there, and with new eyes and a full (but already grieving) heart, I knew that this was it, that this would become a world full of "lasts" as much as it is a world full of "firsts".

But a mommy's love goes on. I love who my boys are becoming, I love who they are making me, and each year is a gift. Nobody is more aware of that than I am.