On great ideas:The second is from my son, who just turned six today. He has just engrossed himself into one of his birthday presents--a full version of a video game he had perfected his route on the trial version of. He bursts out:
Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them own people's throats.
--Howard Aiken
"Thank you, Mom!...Wow, I think that is the first time I ever said thank you for something I really wanted."
I'm not sure what to make of it. He is no longer a baby, though, nor a toddler. He has grown into a full-blown child. He has patience, curiosity, and determination. Also, brute force and stomping fits, but those are increasingly rarer.
One of my favorite things about my children's birthdays is that I have made it into a tradition to tell the story of how they came to be in this world. My son's story starts just after our wedding, when, at Easter, each child and grandchild is given a wind chime. One extra was purchased. I did not know about this until later, but my son now has that wind chime. He must have barely existed at that point. Then I tell how I felt sick, how I went to the doctor who measured my belly as it grew and gave me a little sheet on my baby's development at each visit. I tell how my walk to school gradually changed to a waddle, how I couldn't sit in some seats in class anymore. I tell him about the ultrasound and how we could see his heart and brain and bones, and how we learned he was a boy. Then how I was impatient at his arrival, expecting a Christmas baby but having to wait twelve more days. Then how I called everyone, where his sister went, who was there, and what the nice people did for me and him at the hospital as he was brought into the world. (He was very concerned about the bleeding and pain he must have felt when his daddy cut the umbilical cord. We assured him there were neither.) I tell him all his first gifts from his first birthday, who came and held him and what they said, and all the kinds of birthdays after that up until today.
This is an important story to me. He became an integral part of my identity, as his sister did years before. It also occurs to me that, should we all be God's children, so we all should have a story similar to that of His Son. Our first gifts are not gold and smelly perfumes but instead slippers, balloons and stuffed bears. This is good, because I have no idea what I would have done with myrrh. I think it smells horrible.
To my son, and many more birthdays, and many more recitations of the story.
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