November 23.

Dear Sam,


I promise to write you a proper letter soon. Until then, here's what I'm thinking ... better said by Barbara Kingsolver than me:

A mother’s body remembers her babies — the folds of soft flesh, the softly furred scalp against her nose. Each child has its own entreaties to body and soul.

It’s the last one, though, that overtakes you.

A first child is your own best foot forward, and how you do cheer those little feet as they strike out. You examine every turn of flesh for precocity, and crow it to the world.

But the last one: the baby who trails his scent like a flag of surrender through your life when there will be no more coming after — oh, that’s love by a different name. He is the babe you hold in your arms for an hour after he’s gone to sleep. If you put him down in the crib, he might wake up changed and fly away. So instead you rock by the window, drinking the light from his skin, breathing his exhaled dreams. Your heart bays to the double crescent moons of closed lashes on his cheeks.

He is the one you can’t put down.

Oh sweet Sam. It's no wonder, none of us can put you down. Don't fly away too soon.


Happy birthday!


Love,
Mama