dear jack: one

Dear Jack,

Today you are one. You said "mama" to me yesterday, looking straight at me, babbling it over and over and over as you pivoted in your trademark style, tried to turn over the trash can, unplug a light and topple a bookcase. This morning we went outside - the air is finally cool and light against our skin - and you stood up on your own on the sidewalk and looked at me defiantly. You'll take the step when you want to, and you want me to understand that clearly.

Before you were born, there was a lot we didn't know. We didn't know what it meant to have only one eye and ear. We didn't know what cleft surgeries were like, the stiff smell of sanitizer in the room where we waited for you to come out of surgery. We didn't know the particular beeps of oxygen saturation monitors, when they dip a little low, or too low.

But I talk about that a lot, don't I? And today, on your birthday, I want you to hear what we did know. What we have always known.

 You belong.

We always knew that. We knew that in the first search for your heartbeat at 9 weeks, the first ultrasound at 12 and the second that become the next seven. We knew that when I was sweating through the fetal MRI, and when we drove back and forth to the hospital. We knew that through timid genetic counselors and surgeons and phone calls. We named you and we knew you. You belonged from the beginning, and we belong with you.

You know what else we knew, buddy? We knew that a different body doesn't make it a broken one. We told you - did you hear us back then? - that you are the very fullness of the image of God and Jesus rises with his hands and feet and side split and opened and these are what the world calls broken but we call glorious. You have always been the fullness of that image.

We knew it then and we learn it from you every day. And we learn to keep electrical cords and breakable cups out of sight, that the trash can in the bathroom makes the best drum, that it's better to ride in the big laundry basket and that our laughter is funny enough to laugh at.

All this ordinary glory.  One year doesn't seem like enough time to contain it all. Time itself seems to have stretched to make room for all that you've given us.

One year ago, you took your first few breaths. John the respiratory therapist helped you, but you pulled your breathing tube out on your own when the nurses weren't looking. And every day since, you've lived fully and unapologetically and determinedly, and you've pulled out trach and gtube and laughed at me while doing it, you've learned to sit up and stand and crawl and almost walk even though they said you were "disenfranchised" and you never look back unless to check that we're keeping up. You pull us into the gift of your life. There won't be enough words for it, maybe ever.

When you were born, you took all my old life away with all its old thoughts and fears, all its questions, and those first few breaths, you gave me back a life that's bigger.

I've always loved you with my whole heart. One year in, Jack, I love you with the whole heart that you've made wider.

Love,mom