thirteen

Dear Tolliver,

You stopped wearing your hat last week. And by "your hat" I mean at least the third, maybe fourth, iteration of the same camo MedFlight style, each one worn till it was stinky and frayed. I'm still not sure what this change signifies, but I did notice it coincides with year thirteen.

I love the way you move around the kitchen, cracking eggs and learning to measure ingredients with your heart, the way you brush past in a cloud of cologne and competence, on a collision course with adolescence.

If you are not swinging bats or casting lines, you are climbing - why use just two limbs to walk when four allow you to ascend? You move in age appropriate yet utterly shuddersome ways, to the tops of trees and, in Ireland, up the side of a church. You make me feel like Geppetto, like I somehow created a puppet come alive to do things I could never do, never dreamed of doing. It isn't easy for me to watch you test the limits of comfort, but it does usually feel like the right way to love.

You still read a lot of Garfield and Ariol and Nathan Hale, but you are also working your way through A Sorrow in Our Heart, a substantial work, fomented for decades in the compost of humanity, and I have no doubt you are folding Ekert's frontiersman wisdom into your own life.

You apply a lovely openness to new things, choosing most often not to decide whether it's for you until you've sampled it - British mushy peas, the wheeled luge, memoirs. You are learning to shake the belief that if you're not doing something perfectly right from the beginning, you're not worthy of doing it at all. I'm pretty sure Shakespeare and Babe Ruth worked through plenty of self doubt. 

One similarity between us may be our taste in home decor. The brass whale you said would look nice on the new shelves is exactly my style, understated and easy to dust, just the right shade of metal to go with the matte finishes, different from the plush cats and Black Keys posters your brothers gravitate toward. I hope you'll always shop with me.

There's something in your name I hadn't noticed until recently, Tolliver, that sounds like "to live." Not only do you measure up to that, you help me rescue dormant parts of myself. Your name reminds me of my good fortune, in lots of ways. When I say it aloud it feels like a tiny prayer. Actually, it may often be, because see above re CLIMBING.

This is the first time in years you have not asked to skip school for your birthday. You did ask for an elaborate meal scheme - chicken from Canes, waffle fries from Chik-fil-A and mac n cheese from Hot Chicken Takeover. This combination may be a misuse of time but it's also one I'm definitely going to make for you.

It is easy to envision you as a young adult, wrangling a classroom full of small children or decorating your first apartment. I try not to imagine too far ahead, you with a mustache or a mat of chest hair, managing fly fishing expeditions in Idaho. 

What I know for certain about you at this complex time could fit on the head of a pin.

What I hope you know is how lucky I feel, how loved you are.

xoxo Mom