Three.

A letter to my three year old.

Someday, sooner than I can imagine, I won’t be able to kiss away your discomfort. I won’t be able to ease your mind just by being in your sights. Someday, sooner than I can cope with, my very mommyness will be, at best an afterthought and, more likely, an embarrassment. You claim more of your independence every day. I couldn’t be prouder or more devastated.

Today, you still think that I’m your center. The start and finish of your every day. That dad and I are your only real needs. I want you to always remember that I’m your most important thing. But of course, I want you to forget. I want you to look past me. To what’s next, to what’s yours—and yours alone—to discover and learn and want and understand.

Today, your hands are so small. They grab my face and turn my head if you think I should be focused on you instead of, say, your dad or my dinner.

Your voice is so sweet.

Your belly is so round and soft and smooth.

Your fine hair still bleaches blond in the summer sun.

Your eyes—my eyes, your dedo’s eyes—still look to me for approval and permission and acceptance and validation.

Today, I still clip your fingernails and rub your forehead to make you close your eyes and curl around you for bedtime stories.

I still translate you for the world, because only I can understand what the hell you’re saying, and even that’s only about 17% of the time.

I can still pick you up and hold you to me.

Someday, there won’t be matchbox bulldozers to pull out from between the sheets before I go to bed, or discarded Paw Patrol underpants to trip over.

Or a high-pitched “mommyyyyy” called out from a crib in the next room when it’s time for the day to start.

Or a tiny naked butt running banshee down the hall away from bath time, inexplicably carrying a football nightlight in one hand and hand sanitizer in the other.

But today, there’s today’s version of you and me. The next version will have to come at the unbearable cost of losing this one. But today, there’s three-year-old little you, and little old me.

How I love you, Emmett James.

love first.

When I tuck my kid in at night, I pray over him. First I whisper to him that he is so loved (straight up some Lily Potter parenting right there, folks), and then I say a prayer. It usually goes something like this:

Please, God, let him be healthy and strong as he grows. 

Please keep him safe. From the mean world, from the unforeseen, from himself. 

There's usually something along the lines of a 'please Lord keep his mama calm and sane,' which sounds like a prayer for me but I assure you his best interests are at heart. 

Please give him an open heart and a compassionate spirit and a desire to make his world better—for himself, but also for the people he crosses paths with. And, you know, for me. Obviously. 

Please, God, teach him to love well. He already does. At not quite three, he is so love-filled. He loves his life. Like, loves. his. life. His Lamby. His family and his scooter and the lady at the grocery store and piles of rocks. And me. Oh my gosh, how he loves me. He loves to touch me and hug me and climb on me. Sometimes while he's sitting next to me he'll roll over to get a little closer and say, "Mommy, I miss you." It makes me weepy already that someday someone will replace me in that way—someone else will be his first line of defense, his first call, his safe haven. 

I have no idea who that person will be. 

I have no idea who he'll grow up to love. Given our surroundings, chances are decent he'll fall in love with a pretty little midwestern Christian girl. And we will love her because our son does, and because she loves him. Even if we secretly think she's a little flaky and wears too much eye shadow, we'll love her. 

And if she's not white, or midwestern, or if she calls her God something else while she honors her faith through good living, or she's a he, we'll love her. We will love whomever our son chooses to love. 

For almost three years of praying over him, I've prayed innumerable times that he is well-loved. 

I've never prayed about who that love will come from (although I've prayed for that person). It's never crossed my mind to ask God to make sure my son is straight. I've never prayed that all his friends believe the same things his parents do. I've prayed for him to have love. And friends. And a life that lets him stay, as often as possible, the joyful, funny, empathetic, curious, snuggly maniac he already is. 

I love him ferociously. He understands that love is the most mighty thing. 

I love him completely. He's learning that love is a big deal. 

I love him even when he's being a total shit. He knows love comes first. 

I love him. 

I can’t wait to see who he’ll love in return. 

What if.

I used to get the biggest kick out of badgering the crap out of my high school best friend/freshman college roommate with "what if" questions. I'd love to share a few of the real gems with you, but sadly, there were none. Mostly they were just absurd and unanswerable and asked only to make her laugh but instead just made her roll her eyes and groan.

The "what ifs" in my head right now aren't funny. Oh, they're still absurd - because it's absurd to have to think about these kinds of things; they still feel unanswerable, but really, they are not. 

What if fewer guns really is the answer to how do we keep our children alive until they hit the mean streets of the real world? Until the end of the school day?

What if tighter regulations and some basic common sense would make a difference in the survival rate of our children as they come under attack by their peers? 

WHAT IF YOU'RE WRONG, and you could help change this, and you're just too close-minded and heels-dug-in stubborn to try? 

If it doesn't work, okay. If people are still violently, brutally murdered in seconds, and by the dozen, okay. You win. If the bad guys just shrug their shoulders and get creative and turn to machetes or monster trucks or slow cookers and the same level of mayhem still ensues, okay. If after a reasonable amount of time of trying what seems to work exceptionally well for every other developed and shithole country alike (even those with mentally ill people, and angry people, and cop haters, and racists, and extremists, and non-Christians), if it turns out we were wrong, we can come back to where we are now. 

What if it could be different? Better?   

The audacity of refusing to try. Something. Anything. Of suggesting that a better answer is more of the same. More guns. Of deciding that somehow my husband, my sisters, my friends, should be responsible for making the kind of decision law enforcement trains endlessly for, and in a panicked, confusing, loud, chaotic, terrified moment take it upon themselves to kill a child, because it should be their job to take care of it, not ours. 

The selfishness of being unwilling to ask yourself what an alternative might look like. 

The lack of humility in saying that your rights are greater than the rights of each of the people I say "I love you, have a good day" to every morning. That your rights were written out for you hundreds of years ago, so they can't change and we should stop talking about it, thank you very much. (Did you know there have been 27 amendments proposed by Congress and ratified by enough states to become part of the Constitution? That's 27 times we've said the original version either wasn't quite right or wasn't quite enough, so we made it better.) 

Be humble. Be audacious. Be selfless. Or just be ready to gloat and tell the rest of us we were wrong. Who really cares what your motivation is to impart, or at least allow for, change. 

What if your way of doing things is just. not. working. anymore. 

What if we take better care of each other.