I love who they are.

I lie beside them at night, sing, or don’t sing, as they request. 

I listen all day long, take note of breakfast worries and bedtime wishes and most everything in between.  I pay attention to fickle desires, acknowledge grudges and fears.  Affirm greatest dreams, and salute smallest steps.  Greet bug discoveries and robot voices, take note of progress and of what prompts belly laughs.  Watch them test boundaries and notch belts, recognize failure and try not to interfere.

I do my best to be with them, to look at them with eyes that say things like amazing, and hope they receive the love. 

Mostly, now, ours are the ordinary terrors and everyday miracles of raising boys, and our children’s challenges the old familiar ones of learning to live as themselves in the world. 

It’s our challenge, too — I catch myself trying to narrow the distance between who they are and who I want them to be.  The durability of parental love, though, is that they can be themselves, plain kids, any kind of kids they want to be.  They are already every day miracles.