The Firstborn

(Written previously in the week in hope that some earlier pictures could be scanned. I'm still working on scanning many pre-digital camera pictures into the computer. Our digital days did not arrive until the year of '04 when Grayson was already 6 years old. )

Early morning shrouded in white fog. First rays of day breaking through thick gray...softly illuminating dim silhouettes of still life. I stand at glass door once more, steaming coffee in hand, looking at what has become my life. In looking ahead I cannot help but remember where it is I have come from. January 12th twelve years ago. That night the Lord would bring into my life a little boy who completely altered the course I was on. A new part of me would be born that day....January 12th twelve years ago. 8 lbs 14 ozs of helpless, innocent life was placed gently within my arms....my life forever changed by this person now so dependant on me for his every need.

New Year's 1997. Much loved brother and I stay up...New York ball brightly lit, suspended in air. Count down begins, ball falls gently to the ground to announce a new year. I lay there largely pregnant silently wondering who this baby boy is. My mind jumped ahead to the year 2000. He'd be 2. What would he look like? Who would he be? Would he be cute? Oh how I prayed so fervently that God would not punish my actions of years laced with rebellion...desperately searching to find who I was as a person...what my purpose in life was. I prayed God would not send His wrath down in the form of giving me an ugly baby. How naive I was...how innocent and blind I was still at the age of 23. 2010? Was it possible to ever be a parent to a 12 year old? This baby that lied actively within.....12 years old? So far away. It'd never come. He had yet to even emerge to see the world. Twelve years....a lifetime away. Not only would it be the beginning of a new decade but the 2nd decade of a century the world had not even reached. This baby. Twelve years might as well have been 50 as I lied there and pondered. Somehow, somewhere he'd be twelve oneday..this baby boy within....but I naively thought in all of my girlhood innocence that twelve years was forever and a day away.

Twelve years later I stand in front of a glass door gazing out on gray wintry fields, church steeple clothed in morning fog like a bride awaiting her groom and I know who that tiny unborn baby became...is becoming. Years of sweet memories. Years filled with fast paced activity....blurred with learning the many facets of parenting a growing family and the changing tides of life. Handsome boyish face losing its boyhood look....so close yet still so far from manhood. But I know now as the pendulum has continued to unfailingly sway and years have continued to tick away that manhood for my sweet, handsome boy is not so very far away at all. I fight off unsuspecting tears but still they fall. That tiny boy now this half boy, half man.

How proud doting, devoted husband and I are of him. We flounder our way through this journey called parenting but God has been so faithful and so good to bless us in our faltering endeavors of raising another life to honor Him and contribute all he has been created to be to society....a servant's heart being slowly and painstakingly molded to live a life that will honor the Lord in every way....to give Him the glory for every success He encounters along his way throughout life. What a leader I see in him. What a gift God has given him to see opportunities and act on them...businesses, ways to make money and the discipline to safely guard and deal wisely with the benefits that are reaped. This boy of our's has the heart to give everything he earns yet wait on the moment he sees a need. He is learning what it is to be wise in the decisions he makes concerning what he has been given.

He is the responsible firstborn that has the ability to take charge and run a ship like I do. He is the sweet ever reliable one that I can continually count on to have my forgotten cell phone in his pocket, the forgotten house keys in his hand, the camera on his shoulder, my sunglasses hanging from his collar. He is my strong willed bull that challenges his way through life and wants the whys and hows of all of life. He is intense and passionate about all he does, performing everything he does with all that he has within him. He is the analytical thinker that sees life as concrete, a world devised by a vast array of numbers and geometries, my problem solver that knows there must be an answer for everything that takes place. He is the planner and organizer of them all. When there is an organizing need that needs to be met and my efforts of getting to it have failed I know it is him to which I can assign the task and have every trust that not only will it be finished but done with absolute perfection. He is quite the quintessential perfectionist. His love and appreciation for organization rivals my own.

Though we do battle what this age brings and the challenges that go with it I also embrace this time in life as a total and complete joy because I know that these are the last days of the little boy left within him. I so desperately love that little boy but I find myself falling in love with the emerging man I glimpse throughout my days. How truly bittersweet these passing days are. How much I love the baby boy I held 12 years ago today. I didn't think it was possible to ever love more than I loved then but how much wiser I have become....how much more love has filled my life as he has grown and as 7 other children have multiplied the intensity of my love and the devotion that I have for my 8 beautiful children. How much fun I have with this 12 year old boy that wrestles me to the floor in laughter, that talks non stop about all of life, that stands in awe of current affairs, world news and political activity. How my heart still melts at my little weather reporter as he comes in as he has since the age of 5 and gives me the morning report and any changes that have been made from the previous day's forecast. How in love I am with how mesmerized he is by the science of weather with his weather kits, indoor and outdoor thermometers, rain gauges and wind vanes. How much I love his company as we drive....my map reader, weather forecaster, directional consultant, deer alerter. Though there is still so very much parenting that supersedes friendship right now I see in him the friend he will oneday become...the kind of friendship that is built by years of living together and knowing each others strengths and weaknesses. I falter pretty much every minute of every day on this parenting journey but I see how blessed we are as I look at each of my children and observe Grayson at this age in life.

Morning fog growing thicker, all of life now obstructed from view I return to bedroom. There in basket I spy the folded clothes awaiting storage. Little boy pajamas neatly stacked that Gavin has now outgrown and I remember the nights sweet growing boy wore them some 9 and 10 years ago. His baby face so vivid I can almost smell the lotion and touch his rounded cheeks and I ponder what a strange, cruel thing the wonder of time has become. I enjoy every stage of each of my children. It's not so much that I don't want them to grow and mature and accomplish their purpose in life but I might slow down the years a little more. I have learned to embrace the moment and live within it, experiencing it wholly in every way, because life and the joy of it are so inexplicably short. One gray, foggy, winter morning the sun will rise and twelve years will have passed and that baby you held will quickly be leaving boyhood....one cold winter morning twelve years from now this carefree boy will be a 24 year old handsome man. And it's just not so far away...and in all reality is closer than I ever imagined.

How much I love this tree climbing, axe chopping, gun shooting, chicken rangering, poultry loving, trampoline jumping, fence scaling, weather forecasting, news casting, lawn mowing, dish doing, clothes folding, trash emptying, bike riding, fort building, polite, well mannered, yes ma'am, no ma'am, yes sir, no sir, intense, responsible, charismatic, social, outgoing little boy of mine. How my heart softens at the sight of him.

January 12th. Twelve years ago today a baby boy was born and I became a mother. My sweet boy. My firstborn. Happy Birthday Grayson! You are one of my truest joys. How proud I am of you....of everything you are and all that you are becoming.

I'll love you forever, I'll like you for always, as long as I'm living my baby you'll be.