Dear Sebastian, A week ago Sunday, as I was making black raspberry cobbler for your 12th birthday, I realized something. I thought back to the day of your birth, and your first and second birthdays, and how impossible it felt to “celebrate” the day back then. I could not conceive of making cake or blowing up…
Tag: birthday
I’m 45 and working on making friends with aging.
On May 11th, it was my birthday – forty-five trips around the sun, as they say. I’d say 45 puts me pretty firmly in middle age. I have many thoughts about my current stage of life, and since it’s my belated “birthday post” (I actually started this post more than a year ago, when I…
Celebrating my 9-year-old on International Day of the Girl
Dear AB, Today is International Day of the Girl Child, and it seems a great opportunity to talk about you, my Rainbow baby, seeing as your birthday was less than two weeks ago. Your birthday will henceforth always fall on the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation (though you have been wearing an orange shirt…
To My Firstborn, Age 12
Dear E, You’ve now been twelve for three weeks. It has been a long time since I managed to post about you for your birthday, because funnily enough, it always falls at the busiest time of year. I am determined to write – and finish – this post, so that someday (if you ever read…
Gratitude to my Stillborn Son
Dear Sebastian, It’s that fragile time of year. It’s hot and humid here in southern Ontario – exceptionally so – which always makes me think of you. And cabbage leaves. (To be honest, fridge-cold cabbage leaves in the bra sounds like a pretty good idea right now. But it would definitely make me cry. The…
To My Firstborn On His 10th Birthday
Dear E, It’s Thursday night, June 6th, 2019. Tonight marks a whole decade since I went to the hospital to have the first procedure of my induction, because you were already 9 days late. You were born two days later, utterly uprooting and replanting our lives with your arrival. This evening, you and I took…
Tragic Follow-Up to a Five-Year-Old’s Birthday
You know how everything old is new again? How marketers realized that all the kids of the 80s are having their own kids and will pay good money for things that make them go Aw man, I used to have one of those!! Well, I didn’t, as it happens, have any of these particular items,…
Undulating Perspective III: The Importance of Sleep
Hey, y’all. As you know, I love May. It’s the best month. This year, May has been tougher for our family than it usually is. I’m gonna tell you why for venting purposes, but you can skip this paragraph if you want. Blah blah: all four of us got a stomach bug at different times…
Happy Birthday, Three-Year-Old!
Dear Baby AB, It has already been two weeks since your birthday! I know you’re not a baby. You are THREE. That is BIG. But of course, you’ll always be my baby, so I reserve the right to call you that. I just want you to know, belated or not, that we’re all besotted by…
I am a square. (And such a fortunate one.)
This past Sunday, as you know, was Mother’s Day, and also my thirty-sixth birthday. It was pretty much as lovely as I could have wished for. You also could say it started on Saturday, when I got to (1) take an impromptu nap on the reclining couch upon arrival at my parents’ house, while members…