This Year

This year on this day like every year on this day since the year this boy came along, I sit and reflect on this boy.   Last night I was up late reading the birthday letters, some blog entries and some journal entries from the last eight years.  So much has changed this year and yet, in almost every other year I thought the same thing.  This year we've all made some big adjustments.  I think for the first time moving affected just about every member of this family in some way.  This move was hard on this boy.  He left behind lots of best friends and months ago when just the idea of this move existed, he was already thinking about this day and those friends and the fact that those friends wouldn't be with him on this day.
As I type this, he's upstairs giggling with four other friends.  Two of those friends celebrated his fourth year with him, but he's just really getting to know all of them as this boy he is now.  We often sit and talk about how he's changing.  It is as scary as it is comforting to watch him come into his own.  He's standing up for what he wants not just with his friends, but with us.  It's challenging, but we welcome it most of the time. 
As I realized last year, he's able now to read these thoughts and birthday letters, but it occurs to me this year that he isn't really old enough to understand now what it feels like to have these thoughts and write these letters.  I want to remember this year just the way it feels.  He can't understand now how this feels.  And he doesn't understand now why I spend so much time with knots in my stomach over how much he's exposed to by friends, television, and just the world in general.  He doesn't understand now why I spent so much time trying to decide if he should be allowed to play two sports at one time or why I am still spending so much time trying to decide how to manage his schedule along with the schedules of his younger sisters.  He doesn't even really know that now.  Or does he?
This year we will watch carefully for any effects of moving on his school work and wonder if we're missing something or if what we think we're seeing, we're seeing at all.  We will wonder about the changes in his school and wonder if he's "over scheduled" or if he's having enough time to be a kid.  This year we will continue to do our best to repatriate and help our son figure out life as a third grader in his own country.  We will second guess ourselves sometimes and possibly pat ourselves on the back at other times.  We won't really know until much, much later (if at all) if we should have second guessed less or more or if we should have patted our own backs at all. 
This year feels like the first year of letting go just a little.  I know it is all relative and that at one point I must have felt I was letting go as I left him for the first time overnight with his Daddy when I went back to work, when I dropped him at daycare the first time and when he first went to school all day.  But this year has felt different.  He knows things.  He's becoming more aware of everything in this world and I am becoming more aware of how I really can't protect him from as much as I think I can.
A good friend of mine recently wrote in an e-mail about how she was learning to let her son go with friends he is just meeting, friends she hasn't met, and how she just decided to put him in God's hands.  As she said, "He loves him more than I ever can".  That e-mail brought tears to my eyes.  The words still do.
I struggle so much with wanting to control things and being a parent has got to be the biggest lesson on just how little control we do have.  I have been humbled just about every day for the last eight years.  This year with this move and this boy have really made me see that I can only do the best I can do at this time.  And even then, my best as a mom is never as good as what God can do for him.  This year I started reading prayers and using my quiet time to prayer for this boy (and these girls--but this isn't about the girls right now) and in the midst of all of the moving and life changing that quiet time and those prayers have not been prioritized.  It has made such a difference in the direction of this year.
This year I'd like to start a new resolution as I begin this new year, my ninth year of being a mom.  I'm resolving to get back to that quiet time and those prayers.  I'm resolving to let go and let God.  I'm resolving to continue to give my all and do the best I can, as moms and dads do.
This year, according to the "Love You Forever" book is the year that my little boy just might never want to take a bath or come in for dinner and say bad words when grandma comes to visit.  Well, actually that would be next year, but next year doesn't go with my theme so I exaggerated a little.  That is the stage I relate the most in that book for this moment anyway.
This year I'm writing his letter just for him.  From this year I want to remember this feeling, no matter how uncomfortable.  This year hasn't been all sunshine and dasies.  Just this week in preparation for this day, hasn't been one of my shining moments as a mom.  This year I wonder if he'll remember those less than shiny moments or if his memory will be limited to the moments captured on video and in photos.  This year he isn't old enough to understand that some of those less than shiny moments come from love, from wanting to make this day just right for him.
This year we celebrate eight years of being parents and more than eight years of loving someone more than we ever thought possible.  Happy birthday to our first born and our only son, who is eight years old and so, so loved this day, this year.