There's a Lifetime Right in Front of You

"Don't Lie," Vampire Weekend

 Sawyer James

August 1st, 2013

8 pounds, 15 ounces; 20.5 inches

Dear Sawyer,

You're here. You made it; you're alive...you're breathing and eating and sleeping and crying and living in this great big world, with us. For so long you were here but...not. You traveled with me, sang with me, ate with me. You listened to math lessons and parent conferences. You road-tripped up and down the California coast, chasing jellyfish in San Diego and tasting Thai food in Walnut Creek. You breathed, fish-like, underwater and grew ears, toenails, lungs, and a heart. You hiccuped and thumped from the inside out, asserting your presence even before we laid eyes on your sweet face.

I've loved you since you were nothing more than a distant idea, a future hope kept in the confines of my heart. I've loved you since you were a whispered name in the middle of the night. I fell in love with you when you were smaller than the line on the plastic stick that assured us of your being. But now, I'm full of a new love that can't be categorized or quantified. I was overcome with an emotion that came surging into existence when you took your first breath of air, and it was only then I was even able to begin to comprehend the love a parent has for a child.

My son, there's so much I wish and want for you in this life. I have so many dreams and expectations, and I spend quiet hours thinking about who and what and where you'll be. This letter, if I'm being honest, is as much for me as it is for you.

I hope you are good to the people who love you, because they're worth it. I hope you hug, visit, celebrate with, and vent to these individuals often. I hope you call/text/write back, and preferably in a more timely manner than your mother does. Life is busy and scattered and it's so easy to lose track of people you care about, and I sincerely wish you will always, on some level, be aware of how many people consider you one of their Most Important. Not everyone is as lucky.

I hope you love to learn. On top of being your mom I'm also an educator, so it probably goes without saying that I want school to be important to you. But I hope you love to learn in addition to that. I hope you are curious and full of questions; I look forward to the days when I fall into bed exhausted from your echoed "Why?" I hope you aren't quite satisfied with the "good enough" answer, and instead turn to your own devices to figure out and decipher your brain's puzzles on your own.

I hope you read everything you can get your hands on. Read picture books and young adult books and classics and New York Times bestsellers and obscure recommendations from friends. Read magazines. Read articles people email you-- trust that they were worth emailing in the first place. Recognize that your reading repertoire defines a piece of you-- there's no substitute for spending hours immersed in someone else's written characters, opinions, and plot lines. Reading gives you an invisible power that nothing else can, so do your best to carve out a slice of your day to do just that.

I hope you are a traveler and an explorer. I envision you SCUBA-diving in Bali, trekking through Arizona's Antelope Canyon, snapping photographs of Angkor Wat at sunrise, and trekking through the Pacific Northwest. I want you to experience cultures, languages, and handshakes both foreign and intimidating-- not because I wish you unease, but because it's important to feel unsettled and out of place every so often. It reminds us that we're merely human, and while it's easy to believe everything we know and have is The Best, it's also easy to forget just how much else is out there.

I hope you are brave...in a quiet sense as well as a fighting one. I want you to stand up for your friends and your convictions. I want you to take risks and face people and places and ideas that scare you. I want you to know when vocalizing your stance is important, but I also want you to recognize when the most courageous choice is to hold your tongue; to accept and to compromise-- because whether you like it or not, sometimes you'll have to and it will be hard.

I hope you do what you can to see the best in people. Remember that it's impossible to know what someone's day week year life looks like from his personal vantage point; it's impossible to truly put yourself in his proverbial shoes. Trust that most people, for lack of a better term, "mean well"-- their intentions are well-thought out and their objectives clean. Realistically though, throughout your life, you will come across some people who seem like they aren't very interested in the pursuits, journeys, and successes of others. Be bigger than them. I hope you try very hard to be happy for others, even if it means you didn't score the goal or get the raise or find your soulmate. Remember jealousy is a human trait-- you'll experience it, too-- but even in its presence, you can still applaud the accomplishments and happiness of others. Your own happiness stems from your ability to recognize and celebrate the same trait in the people around you.

I hope you remember that as long as you're following your heart and your instincts, you have no reason to dwell on what others think of you or your decisions. I struggle with this, and I very much wish I was better at rising above judgment or comparisons instead of constantly trying to please, impress, and agree with people around me. It's a losing battle anyway...and part of what's lost is your own voice. Just because your friend wouldn't have made the same decision doesn't mean you shouldn't have. However, the balance between compromise and self-sacrifice can sometimes be hard to gauge- do you best to recognize the difference.

I hope you are open-minded. Everyone won't always agree with you (that's okay!) and in their heads they are just as "right" as you believe you are. I hope you do your best to worry as little as possible-- so many of our worries are trivial or unchangeable anyway. I struggle with this in certain chapters of my life, too, and I hope you are better at recognizing when worry is silly and unnecessary.

I hope you have a childhood as enviable as I believe mine was. I hope you face Space Mountain at Disneyland, even though it's dark and fast and scary. I hope you believe in magic and pirates and good deeds and paying it forward. I hope you pick up trash that isn't yours--not all the time, but sometimes-- because you believe (despite all of the evidence to the contrary) that you can leave the world a little bit better of a place than you found it. I hope you overturn rocks in tidepools and marvel at even the tiniest sea creatures underneath. I hope you have barefoot lemonade stands in our front yard. I hope you are a good friend. I hope you love animals with wild abandon. I hope you floss.

Your entire life (your ENTIRE life!) is ahead of you. Skinned knees, lost teeth, training wheels, pillow forts, first kisses... you have a soaringly stark canvas to paint-- it's entirely yours. I feel like the luckiest person in the entire world to have been granted a front-row seat to the making of your masterpiece. You may not be able to quite yet hold a pen, but you are already a brilliant artist. Shine bright, my son.

With more love than I could ever even begin to put on paper,

Mama

Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. 

It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. 

It's round and wet and crowded. 

On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. 

There's only one rule that I know of, babies-- 

God damn it, you've got to be kind.

-Kurt Vonnegut