birthday/unbirthday
Ben's birthday begins in twenty minutes and I am, more or less, pretending it doesn't.
I don't know why. I'm feigning scheduling issues and work schedules and party conflicts and ...it's Wednesday. I'm figuring he doesn't know it's his birthday. My brother called and said When can you guys skype tomorrow? We need to sing Happy Birthday to Ben and when I told him we kind of weren't doing Ben's birthday tomorrow, he didn't know what to say. Which made me not know what to say.
We'll make it up to him. A trunkful of fish pond prizes says so. But for tomorrow, I am pretending.
I say I don't know why.
+++
He wandered around all day today with his pants undone. I snapped them together ten times. They weren't tight, yet he'd retreat to a corner to unsnap so that he could walk around with his belly all lolling out and Justin said Ha, look at that. He takes after his mother. It was one of those sights, vertigo-inducing. The crayola, the crumbs, the chub that clings to his fingers. It's altogether too much, when love is sparked from a place like May of 2007. Not rooted with obliviousness and assumptions, but with devastation and morphine.
I wonder if I'll ever just see an undone button. For his sake, I hope so. For Liam's sake, I hope not. And the voice that used to speak to me would remind me to quit thinking I know so much about what's good for its sake, if it still spoke to me.
I'm confused.
In every possible way I am hiding from the significance of three. I scroll down and down and down the archives of all this writing, at all the months between now and then, and it makes me gasp. As Justin sleeps I look out the window at blackness and all I see are stars.
They don't talk back.
I wrote this through midnight this morning. Liam's maple bloomed overnight. My friend Leah had made Ben a birthday garland, and I hung it today so that I would see it.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Reader Comments (44)
I had a fifth grade student tip the contents of her drink bottle on a boy she liked who had broken her heart. I was impressed. The same student wrote a letter that blew my mind. 11 years old. I was impressed then too.
I guess that it's not always the same kind of impressed. She did 'the wrong thing' in response to a heart break that felt significant to an 11 year old. I laughed, and scolded. She excelled academically, and I was impressed by that too.
So those months and months between now and then have all these moments that capture you responding to something that is beyond significant. And you do it in ways that make me laugh and smile and cry and get stuck with my jaw on the floor. Don't stop doing that. Of course, I'd wish it all away if it meant that your life happened differently. But you're always impressive, in any response. The good part is that I know you are genuinely not fishing for praise or compliments or lights in the dark but it's so nice to see that you have a place where that'll turn up anyway. And they'd wish themselves all away too, if it meant you weren't stuck with this. But, for someone who is... "you do a good job" doesn't feel like enough. Because everyone 'does a good job' in way way or another. I'm losing my direction and point here.
Just. If someone ever asked you "do you know what Alison thinks of you?"... nod. Maybe one of these days I'll figure out how to say it.
xo
Love, Lindsay
Happy Birthday to your two gorgeous boys.
And much love to you. xo
Also, I love Ben's tummy hanging round over his pants. I'd be compelled to raspberry it every time he walked by. I love their shifting bodies at that age--from potbellied toddler to lean four year old. What a beautiful transformation.
xom
Happy birthday to sweet, sticky Ben, and beautiful Liam, and my love to you. I hope you get through this day, and all of the memories it blasts you with, in one piece.
Don't feel guilty about the celebration date- every day is a party when you're 3. :)
Much love.
Love to you, Kate. And happy birthday Liam and Ben.
But they come unbidden, meditations on letting go... even though none of us really wants to untie that mooring. And it is a little like coming unanchored, isn't it? Suddenly disoriented - where is that hook that was so securely in my heart? It just about killed me, it dug in so deep, but at least I knew *to whom* I was tethered, at least I knew my harbour...
But then, I remember that the communication I had with my father after he died came and went as well, like an old radio with bad transmission. For the longest time, there was nothing, and then, in my mid-twenties, there he was again, a whole year of communion, out of nowhere. Just because Liam is quiet now doesn't mean that you can't return to that harbour someday and go diving for that spot where you were anchored so firmly at first. Maybe he just senses that there is a little three-year-old (who is THREE!!! THREEE!!!!!) who needs more immediate attention. When Liam needed you, you were there for him, unconditionally. I am sure he wouldn't want any less for his twin brother. Or his mother.
I've got a bit of a fever tonight, so I hope this is coherent... but I just couldn't get it off my mind this afternoon, what a tightrope act it must be to want to celebrate and mourn, honor a memory and play pin-the-tail games, all at once. Blessings to you, Kate.
and your sons.
remembering the flickers of love and hope and light and breath.
always mamalove.
xoxo
Happy Birthday boys.
Happy birthday, Kate, a day when everything changed.
So.
Happy birthday, dear Ben, with your pants undone and your belly hanging out. You are awesome. And didn't you just have a birthday, like, last month? My boys were there and we had such fun. I can't wait to see you again.
Happy birthday, dear Liam, wherever you are. Floating in space or living in that maple tree or wrapped around your earth-family.
All the best to you, Kate, and Justin and Evan too.
extra love and peace and light to you today, mama. xo.
xx
It's a hard trick to pull off.
Thinking of Ben and Liam on their third birthday. x
Too many other thoughts to type on my phone.
The Baby's birthday is five days before Jimmy's day, and not too many people understand the ambivalence I greet it with. I will always believe Jimmy was watching over his little brother, much like it sounds like Liam protected Ben.
A refrain kept going through my head when I picked out the stone for our spot, but I couldn't find the author. It marks where my baby will always be; I hope you read it and when you look to the silent stars, it helps:
"Where the stars meet the sea,
That's where I'll be."
Hugs to you, Kate, on a truly sweet and salty day of days.
happy birthday to all of you.
I now see my three-and-a-half year old in a different way, after losing his baby sister last summer. And I see his birthday differently too, because she might have shared it. (They had the same due date, three years apart.) I can only imagine the view from where you are and the mixture of emotions their birthday - or that undone button - evokes. The photo is wonderful - I love the little square of exposed belly skin.
Happy birthday, Ben - you are marvelous and I wish you could meet my son - I think hooliganism would ensue. Happy birthday, Liam - you are marvelous, too, and I will always remember you.
Love and light to you, Kate.