How long??

Twenty-six years and twenty-four hours ago, on a day almost as cold as this one, my second son made his grand debut into our lives.  We didn't know the gender of our first two kids in advance--and I was wanting another boy in the worst way--so when the doctor announced "It's a boy!" his dad and I were absolutely delighted.

Yesterday, as I remembered that cold Friday morning in January 1984, I didn't have any deep thoughts or eloquent statements to commit to my blog.  I texted him to wish him happy birthday, and to tell him I loved him very much--the same thing I told him when the nurse put him in my arms for the first time.  Later, we chatted on the phone for a while and he told me about his plans for snowboarding today, and about a truck he was interested in buying, and when he might be coming home to visit.  Simple stuff.

But in the early hours this morning I woke up, and as I lay there in the dark listening to the wind I thought about myself twenty-six years ago, and what I would tell that girl now if I could, and if I thought she would listen.   I might try to warn her, Back To The Future style, about some dates and events she needed to be aware of....like, "go ahead and give him those roller blades for his 14th birthday, but do NOT let him go to the skate park the next week because he's going to break his his arm in a couple of places and you don't have health insurance."  A tip like that would have saved me a bundle, believe me.

More than that, what I really think I would tell her is less tangible, and more important.  I'd tell her to pay attention, to live in the moment, to take her time with her kids because while it's ridiculously trite, it is so true --they DO grow up too fast.  I'd tell her to chronicle their lives a little better than those quick entries she made in their baby books--because she WON'T always remember which one said or did the amazing things they said and did.  I'd tell her to wake them up every single morning by telling them how brilliant, how special, how loved and adored they were.  I'd tell her to never utter the phrase "Hurry UP!"to them--because Life hurries up enough as it is and she doesn't need to rush through all of it.  And I'd tell her that some winter morning when she's 50--an age she can't even wrap her 24-year-old brain around because it's so remote as to be unbelievable--she'll wake up in the dark and wish she hadn't been so impatient to get here.

And I'd definitely warn her about the roller blades.