Dear Zoey,
One day someone is going to fall in love with the freckle on your bottom lip. If he is a poet, he will probably write odes to that freckle; if he is a shoe salesmen he may still. Or she, whatever, the point being there is a freckle on your lower lip that reminds me of hearing my favorite song on the radio while I'm driving with the windows open on a day that smells like sweet grass. Please don't grow up and wear too much lipstick.
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| Last photo of 7. |
Sometimes now when I kiss you goodnight you don't stop talking and I end up kissing your teeth.
Something something about Minecraft and the story of how the annoying boy chased you at recess. It all runs together, from the description of your drawing to what happened in the Judy Moody book to where does maple syrup come from and why are you only turning 8 when you were born in 2006 and that was 9 years ago?
I don't know.
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| First photo of 8. |
I don't know how you got to be this person who talks to me about kindness and tide pools. How you are turning 8 when you were born just a second ago and yet have always been a part of me? You used to wear the teeniest little socks printed like Mary Janes and now we wear each other's socks, yours on legs now thin and coltish. When we walk to school you squeeze my hand and I squeeze back in a secret code that I will never, ever tell, but what I will tell is this: sometimes I love you so fiercely it's hard to breathe.
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| Those are my socks. |
It's all so hackneyed, the time and the goes and the fast, even this letter, and so I focus on what is distinctively, perfectly, only you: the freckle on your bottom lip. How your eyelashes look like starfish when you swim. How I stand in the hallway sometimes when you don't know I'm there just to listen to you sing to yourself. How no matter what you are singing it is the most beautiful, purest, truest thing I have ever heard, and how I am the luckiest person in the whole wide world to be your mom.
I love you, I love you, I love you.
Happy birthday, sweet girl.
Forever,
Your mommy
7
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5 (too pregnant with Ozzy to write 5)
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1 (pre-blog)
10 comments:
Tears!
I saw this post title on my blog roll and thought NO WAY IS ZOEY TURNING 8 NO WAY!
And then I welled up at the first mention of the freckle ... but it was the standing in the hall which got me proper crying. I do that to and they are the most precious moments of my life.
Happy birthday Zoey. And happy birth day to you.
Those eyelashes! Jeez!
XO
Adored!
Our babies are the same age and you always manage to describe just how I feel. My big boy turned 8 on 4/2. Just beautiful.
As always, my writerly and motherly inspiration...love you, friend. Happy birthday, Z!
She is a beauty, that's for sure!
M
She is a beauty, that's for sure!
M
Tears and a gigantic lump in my throat! Mine is eight this ear and I love her that desperately too.
Alright, alright, alright. I know I have not popped in to pay a visit in quite some time. I am glad to see you are still up to your old petunia face self.
When is your book coming out because I want to keep reading it over and over. Your writing is pure sass.
Just yesterday, my second born son, 21 now was doing a dance that he has always done when mother nature calls and all I could see was him when he was a tot doing that same dance. We laughed so hard and I made him remember the time we were stuck in traffic and I had to give him a water bottle to empty his little self. He said Mom, you have always been there for me. Now that's love. I can honestly say with each year, the love grows.
Celebrate that little lady, freckle and all.
pve
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