I know I always start with this question: “where have the years gone?” or “when did this happen?” so I will switch it up this time. I’ll just say: you’re here, on the 15th year of your life! You have arrived. And, I am sorry to say - I know it’s painful and depressing and what not (or knowing you, probably not) - but you’re no baby anymore. Welcome to young adulthood, son! The fact that you are a tax-paying, potential union-enrolling workforce member should tell you that childhood is in the rearview mirror.
And oh, I am so happy for you! I feel like in some ways we have all been waiting for this day since the minute you were born, on your terms only, 2 months before your time 15 years ago today, when you could not even breathe on your own... I have been wondering and dreaming about what purpose you might have been put on this planet for. And now, that day is near: we’re gonna find out. I hope soon!
I hope your natural-born curiosity, your immense empathy, your love of family among other things will guide you to great things, sweet boy, and will only put you in the best places to make the most of.
As any teenager, of course, you are playing the part: confused, klutzy, lost at times, eyes wide-open with clever and not so clever ideas, full of energy and drive, almost to a fault, with seemingly no direction at all, you plough right on through ... You try out every thing that comes to your mind (just like you did as a small child when you were learning how to knit and do woodworking right alongside learning how to build stuff from legos and how to play Minecraft several years before your time). And yet, there is a grace and a kindness about you that warms my soul and wants me to always draw you near ...
Sometimes I think you’re like a garden: beautiful and loaded with richly-growing, blooming vines, with breathless smells and vibrant colors; but also full of weeds. I want to compulsively reach in and pluck all the weeds out, so I can let all the flowers shine free. And then I stop myself and think: those are not mine to pluck! Those are yours to groom or let die; yours to decide how to use them; yours to turn into lessons or let overgrow and eat all the beauty out. But yours. Your decision only.
Hopefully, with guardrails and “training wires” all around you from all of us, you will find the right path to grow into. Or maybe not. But you will have to do you, and do it on your terms just like you did your birth in your own terms, too. You will be either a worse version than we all ever dreamed for you to be, or much, much better yet than our wildest imagination.
Spring forward, sweet child! Shoot to the stars and be daring! I know somewhere in there there are good bones ... you just need to fill them with good dreams and put them up to good deeds, too ...
Do you remember my bracelet: find your purpose, my dear boy! The world is your oyster. Make yourself count for it all!
Love you mostest still and forever ...
Happiest of birthdays and I wish you the best wishes you can ever wish for yourself!
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