I just got home from Party City, where I fought back tears.  All I bought was wrapping paper and napkins.  Liam will be TEN tomorrow.  My little boy isn’t having a Stanley, Thomas, Cars, Thomas, Thomas, Dinosaur, Fort Fun, Pokemon party. Liam’s not having a big party.  He’s not having balloons or even a cake.  He’s having  cupcakes he made with his dad.  We’ll gather at his grandma’s house – the same place with the same people where we celebrated his real first birthday.  The same place where we washed him, covered in cake and frosting, in the kitchen sick,  A few days later we went to City Park and raised money for the Heart Institute in celebration of Liam’s life. At that first big party, I handed out birthday candles I made out of  jars from baby food Liam ate his first year.  It was a big deal.

When Liam turned five, that was a big deal too because I spent his first five years haunted by the statistic I read during my pregnancy that 1/4 of kids like him didn’t survive to start kindergarten.  So, when he turned five I was celebrating that he was in the 3/4.  With the passage of a decade, the statistics have shifted.  Now instead of kindergarten 1/4 don’t make it to high school graduation. . . so the old 1/4 is living longer but not long enough, and it makes me wonder are we in the 3/4 or the 1/4?  I won’t know until we get there, or if we don’t.

I really wish I could remember my son’s actual birthday with joyful nostalgia, but each new year feels frightening.  Will this be the last year? Is this all we get?  I wish I could stop these thoughts, but they come at me every year, reminding me that we’ve cheated death. This is all my personal emotional baggage.  I’ve been holding on so tight for so long, that it takes more strength for me to let it go than to keep holding it in. . . it is time to let it go.

Liam isn’t making a big deal about turning ten.  He’s naturally excited about his birthday, but not for any reason than it’s a birthday and he’s a kid.  He’s just a kid.  I wish when I thought about his birth I could only remember the first time I heard him cry and how it soothed my heart, but I trip forward to the next morning when we had to choose between hospice care, transplant or surgery.

I keep tripping on the roots of Liam’s life, even as he grows like a beautiful tree, changing with the seasons of his life. This is his life, and he is moving forward.  I want to move forward too.  I want to stay in step with him as he bounds through life.  I want to move forward with him in the present and stop being trapped in the past.

Tomorrow I will try not to focus on Liam’s birth but instead focus on his life, the life he’s earned, and the life unfolding like new leaves in the spring.  Still, when he blows out those ten candles, I will make the same wish I always wish . . . more, please.

This is a poem I wrote that captures some of the weight I feel around Liam’s birthdays.  I really want to lose my grip on the past and embrace the future.  I am trying, but we were once joined by a cord of shared flesh.  I made that baby, and it’s so hard to let those memories go, to release what was and make room for what is.  I am trying.

Always

I watch you grow.
Though you left my body, a decade gone,
you are always inside me.

Flooded with memories of your infancy,
the flight crew who lifted you to the city of angels
and the long lonely hours I lagged behind
until I found you wired and tubed;

we waited.

I remember each time I signed my name
in consent to open your body,
so many times I agreed to your violation
and surrendered you to suffer for survival;

we waited.

I watch you grow aware, I fear your knowledge.
Amazed how far you’ve come, and the price
for each inch gained. I stagger  to carry
the growing karmic debt that is your life.

We wait.

I watch you grow, approaching my eyes
your head too high for me to rest my chin.
You want me to hold you, all seventy pounds
but I’ve never set you down.

I watch you grow.
Though you left my body, a decade gone,
you are always inside me.