Dear Miles: Year One

Dear Bubbub,

I call you Bubbub more than I call you Miles.  I don’t quite know how I came upon that name for you or why it stuck, but it has.  

It's your birthday today and I wanted to write you a little note.  I would like to do this every year, maybe for you to read each year as you grow up, or maybe as a little book I put together for you when you’re on your way to college.

When I met your father, I wasn’t sure about having children.  In my relationship with him, a love grew and grew and grew so much that it had to spill out and over and into another being.  I thought of you often, even before you were conceived.  Who my child would be one day.  What he or she would look like.  What kind of person he or she would become.

Your father and I made you, and you grew and grew inside me, just like our family’s love.  And as you grew, I dreamt of you, of what you would look like and what kind of person you would become.

You were in such a rush to come out, ready to face the world, to see everything.  When I think about your birth, it’s a perfect analogy about who you are.  Restless, like you were in my belly.  Busy.  Discovering things.  Touching everything.  Testing the world and its limits.  They say children are scientists until we teach them not to be.  I think you are the most perfect scientist.  I have to say no sometimes, because it’s not quite safe to eat computer cords or the moss that grows in the cracks of the sidewalk.  But there is so much of me that wants you to experience your entire world, including what that moss tastes and feels like inside your mouth.  I hope that your Dad and I do our best to foster that love of exploration that seems to seep from your pores.

You started out so helpless, wobbly, unsure.  Now, at just one year old, you’re a little independent man. Running, dancing, stomping, growling, crouching, pointing, grunting and gasping.  And oh my, are you sweet.  You tenderly hug your stuffed animals; your bedtime buddy, Zebra; your neighbor friend, Frankie.  When your Dad and I kiss when we’re holding you, you lean in for your kiss too.  You cuddle with the best of them.  

I never really understood unconditional love until I had you.  

I remember the moment you were born.  The exact moment is still fresh and clear in my mind.  I heard you cry and someone said, “It’s a boy” and your father and I looked at each other and we started crying.  Your dad said, “We have a baby boy.”  And the love hit me.  Hard.  I hadn’t even seen you yet but my love for you was complete and instantaneous.

It seems that every day I see something new in you, something you’ve learned, some new way to move your hand or play with a toy or shuffle your feet.  Some days the changes are big, like the first time you said, “Mama” or the first time I saw you take a few steps.  Some days the changes are small and nuanced, so small that they would be missed by anyone but your father and me, like the way you lift your feet ever so slightly when we’re putting on your shoes or your pants.

The things I enjoy the most about you are your persistence and your sweetness.  You will continue to work with the problem at hand until it is accomplished.  Whether that problem is removing all the books from the bookshelf or getting the cat to chase the toy you’re holding, you will get the job done.  And at night, when the business of the day is finally over, your body folds so nicely into my lap, your head against my sternum, your breath soft, your hair sweet, and I feel like I could sit there with you until the end of time.

Miles, Bubbub, you are a good boy.  I’m so very glad you came into our family. 

Love,

Mama.