six

I probably should have just written a short birthday tribute and slapped it on the gram with a bunch of my favorite pictures of him from the summer. Oh well.

On Thursday of this past week, Freddy turned six. He is our littlest, still so little, and also in many ways, not quite so small anymore. He is our blueberry baby, our summer love, our Vermont boy, and our family’s shooting star wish come true. The parts of us that think of him as new are less close to the surface than they once were; we have known him for a good stretch of time, and seasons, and years now. And we know him. So well. His quirks, his idiosyncrasies, his stubbornness, his smart humor, his gentle sensitivity.

He has spent his whole life in the loving embrace of many big arms. I try to imagine what it might be like for him to live inside the care and connection of so much family, of such an established heart. And I cannot. The older he and all of our kids grow, I find it less and less easy to begin to understand what their experiences of growing up inside of so much love and stability, so much safety and security, might feel like. And I am glad for that. They are not me. I am not them.

We are having a hot summer. I will not complain. We have so much beautiful water to swim in, and winter is always in the back of our minds, a lurking reminder of who we really are. After all, we cannot all be summer babies. There is only one in this house. We spent the hot week of Freddy’s birthday in and out of bodies of water. Dripping dry just enough to heat right back up and do it all over again. His best bud was visiting from away all week, which was the very best present of all. The whole week was a party and his party was a bounce house and water balloons and a blueberry cake. The artists made him his gifts and I think his bar is probably fucked for his entire life. He has personal magic makers that are making sure he is always stepping into glitter dust and that every stone he picks up has a crystal sleeping inside.

If this whole month is hot, and I surely hope it is, I will make a party of every week. I will squeeze this summer for every shred of play I can get out of it. I will stock up. I will keep swimsuits in every bag. Freddy, my trusty assistant, my consummate side-kick, will help me in egging his sibs along with us. I will bludgeon all of my malaise with as much summer as I can carry.

No small task. I have been remembering with such fresh detail this summer, the specific sort of grief I felt when my older kids began moving away from their early childhood. Their need for me changes as they grow, and as much as I understand now that their need for me is not ending, but rather metamorphosing, it is still a discomfort to change my shape so dramatically. The ever-approaching tsunami of perimenopause is not the most friendly space from which to be navigating the grief of childhood’s finitude. This biological timing, synced up with so many life transitions, is enough to make me cry. And laugh. And cry a whole lot harder.

My shell is all the way cracked these days. I mostly just ooze guts. Is that a fun way to think of mommy when you are six? I hope so. I hope he’s into it. I hope he looks back on his childhood and thinks of me as his magic maker, his recordkeeper, his conscious witness, the way the big kids do. And not just as the pile of hot garbage that side-eyes me in windows and rear-view mirrors.

I probably should have just written a short birthday tribute and slapped it on the gram with a bunch of my favorite pictures of him from the summer. Along with a retrospective jog through all his previous birthdays. Maybe I still will. But nothing is that simple these days, and I am so tired of leaving steaming piles of my writing in so many different corners like the forgotten, unlaundered contents of a upended gym bag.

But this is the truth. As it is. In the summer of my 47th year as the mother of a 19, 16, and freshly minted 6-year-old. I am tired and sweaty and sad and excited and overwhelmed and distracted and unfocused. But earnest. Still so earnest. And still so in love with life and its infinite possibilities in the form of my own flesh, my own mind, but mostly in them and theirs. I won’t be sorry for it. I have given my life to them, and as much as that might make me feel strange and unhinged now in this season, it was still the only choice that was ever all the way mine to make.

I don’t have regrets. Just longing. It’s a confusing time to be a person. To be a woman. To be a mama. In my body but also in the world. I have one eye trained in every direction, across every timeline. I’m not sure how to live any other way. With all of the stories that were and were not intertwined and entangled.

To wrap it up, whatever this is, how bout a list of Freddy’s birthday gift haul? Cuz wow, it is the perfect summation of who he is right now, fresh six. The gift list!

Katie made him a Puffin stuffie (inspired by the main character in a book Freddy wrote this spring).

Maple gave him a book and made a fancy little elephant in a birthday hat and sweater, now named “Bean Bag Butt Two”, long story.

I gave him a pair of binoculars.

Chris gave him Night Ninja and his Night Bus.

Eider gave him a Star Wars LEGO set.

Vera gave him one book about rocks and another about poops.

Gran gave him a fanny pack (if you’ve seen him this week, you know) with some secret goodies inside.

And his cousies gave him some geodes to crack and fossils to excavate.

This whole list is so perfectly relational, I can’t get over it. A moment in time curated through objects.

So I guess that’s it. A gooey guts birthday tribute to our baby. Covertly walking me up through the ages with all the lasts and a whole bunch of firsts I have yet to really understand. Onward.