Dear Baby Boy, Happy 1st Birthday!

Today we celebrate your first birthday. We celebrate you. On this day one year ago your mama and baba rushed to the hospital on a warm October afternoon as you announced your arrival into this world. I will always remember that day for as long as I live. And even though that night everything seemed to pass by in a blur, every single moment, every emotion, every word, the room, the nurses.. everything is carved in all the details into my memory forever. And yes, also the pain. Pain with such purpose. Pain transforming into pure life force. It felt as if even time was holding its breath that night as we experienced together how your journey, that started nine months earlier, brought you from your inner most safe and secret world out into the light and into our arms.

We already loved you long before you were born, ever since we saw those two little lines on the pregnancy test and heard your heartbeat for the first time on the ultrasound. But nothing could prepare me for the love I would feel when I first held you in my arms and you glanced into my eyes. You, most perfect and tiniest you. Without you the universe and all that there is would be a little less.

As I was taking my first steps into motherhood days turned into weeks turned into months turned into seasons and into your first year. We have been inseparable for what has been one year of my life but all of yours. And I don’t even remember very well anymore how you could not have been in mine before. That’s what motherhood does to you, it changes your life so profoundly and so completely.  Before you I thought I knew the meaning of patience, doubt and hope. And that I understood the notion of feeling grateful, connected and blessed. But you, as small as you still are, already taught me a that there is a whole other level to these things.

New born, baby, toddler. Every day you grow. Reaching new milestones and learning new skills on your way to independency. We celebrate them and encourage you in all your new adventures. But every new stage is also a bittersweet goodbye from the previous one and from the little baby that you have been only a short while ago. I try to capture the wonderful moments with you in writing and in photographs. Eager to document them and safe them for a lifetime to remember.  Already I can feel the different pace of time that parenthood is bound to. The days can be long, especially when they start as early as the first call to morning prayer, yet the years will flow by so very quickly. We’ll be holding your hand when you take your  first steps soon. We’ll be blowing out candles on cakes and buy school books and meet girlfriends and help you learn how to drive a car and celebrate graduation and maybe dance with you on your wedding day one day. And we will watch you grow up as we will grow with you and yes, also grow old, and it will all go so fast that I can’t breathe when I think of it. But today, in the here and now, I am your mommy and you are my baby and it will be like that for all the here and nows of all the tomorrows too. Today you are my happiest little boy, sitting on the floor, screaming in delight at the colorful balloons flying around in the room. You laugh at the silly faces that we make and clap your tiny hands to the birthday songs I sing for you in different languages and you point your little finger at everything that catches your attention. When we ask for a kiss you push your whole cute little face into our cheek which is the best of the best of anything. I love you so very much my little one, more than you will ever know. 

Happy first birthday my sunshine, thank you for being mine. 

Mama