Zephyr is Four!

We had Zephyr's birthday dinner a little early this year, since I have to work tonight. Last year he asked for brown rice, broccoli, and tofu. This year, just tofu. I suppose I can't complain!

Dear Zephyr,

Today I was watching you play this crazy game that you invented on a whim, where you would chase a helium balloon around the room, hitting with a stiff plastic tube and hollering, "I got you, you bad balloon!" Over and over again. You were completely engaged, enjoying the physical activity, the challenge of hitting something over your head, your powerful words. I was marveling about several things: your dexterity, the fact that we've had this stiff plastic tube since you were under a year old and that it's been used in countless ways, the simple games you invent that keep you gleefully occupied. "I want to be more like Zephyr," I announced.

You are confident. You always speak your mind (even when it's a little embarrassing for me!) You eat delicious foods as a matter of course, but you don't overeat, and you don't obsess about what your next meal might be. You play hard with your friends, but when they're not around, you passionately enjoy your own company. Your imagination is extensive; tonight in the bath I listened and watched as four different colored fish toys conversed and cavorted in their soapy sea. You are constantly learning new things, thanks to your natural inquisitiveness. You are loving and cuddly when you're in the mood, and you never pretend to be when you're not. You express anger and irritation with great force, but when as soon as amends have been made, you move on, wasting no time on grudges or regrets.

I pray for the wisdom and restraint to encourage your naturally wonder-full self to continue to unfold, revealing the beautiful being that you are. And that you are becoming.

Your Dada summed it up succinctly. "He is completely in the moment." I have learned so much from you during your four years (Four years?!?!? How can it be?) on this greenish earth. Now that you're officially a "preschooler" by age, I am constantly looking for opportunities to teach you something. But at the end of the day, you have always taught me far more than I've taught you. Lessons about love, wonder, and my own strengths and limitations. You push me to be a better person, because I want to model only positive characteristics for you. I am far from perfect, but imagining what I look like through your eyes helps me try harder to do my best. Thank you.

For once, there have been no big life changes this year- we didn't move, get pregnant, have a baby, or even fly anywhere on a plane. Without major events to punctuate the year, I can still evaluate your growth, but it takes a careful sifting through the extraordinary every-days of our lives.

You are far more independent than you were a year ago. For instance, I always felt sad when I saw you leafing through the pages of a book by yourself. I assumed you really wanted me to read it to you, but I was too busy with your baby sister, so you resigned yourself to second-best. A month ago was one of these times, but I suddenly found myself empty-handed and available. I sat next to you and started reading the page you were looking at. "No, Mommy, I don't want you to read it!" you insisted. "Why did you do that?" While I felt a guilty weight slip off my shoulders, I also felt the tiniest stab of something else- the knowledge that sometimes, to you now, "by myself" is preferable to "with Mommy."

You have proved this many times, playing happily all by yourself for much of the morning or afternoon, driving your trains around their track, riding your bike and trike fleet from one end of the house to the other, digging in the dirt with your trucks or garden tools, putting together every puzzle on the shelf. When I have a few minutes to pick up toys, I often think of my mother who allowed my best friend Laura and I to create elaborate make-believe worlds which stretched throughout the downstairs of our house. I will find unusual clusters of toys tucked away in every corner- a turtle, three blocks, an ATV, and a stuffed mouse; a tea cup, a plastic egg, three wooden train sets, and a zebra- and it all looks so intentionally placed that I can hardly bare to be the party pooper that separates them into their respective toy bins. I fear that you'll come back to that nook and scream when you find your hard work undone, but you don't. As Bob the Builder would say, "The fun is in getting it done." And as your wise Dada knows, you truly are in the moment.

You may not need Mommy around all the time, but you sure know how to show your love when you feel like it. For a while, you tried to corner the market on my affection. "You only love me, Mommy," you would insist. "You don’t love Dada and you don't love Jubilee." I had read about situations like this. "I have more than enough love to fill your whole body, and then some," I'd respond. "I will always give you all the love that you want and need." You wouldn't be fooled. "But you don't love anyone else, Mommy. Say you just love me." Between conversations like that, heated pretend sword play with your father, and the way you enthuse, "Be mine!" when you see me dance, I suddenly understand how Freud came up with the Oedipus Complex. Eventually, you seemed to realize that I wasn't going to deny my love for your father and baby sister, so now you're working on Jubilee. "You don't love Mommy or Dada, Jubi. You only love your older brother Zephyr."

I'll close with one of my favorite things that's happened in the last month or so. You discovered a previously unnoticed book on the book shelf, a slim yellow volume that I've been carrying with me throughout much of my adult life. It's a story I first discovered while babysitting as a college Junior. I read it to the kids, and loved the words and illustrations so much, I was tempted to slip it into my backpack after putting the kids to bed. Instead, I acquired it legally, and spent time wondering what it is about that book speaks to me so profoundly. Ultimately I came to the conclusion that it described the childhood I wish I'd had.

Although the young protagonist frolics through lush meadows, picking berries and rolling down grassy hills, and we live in the desert, I feel like you are sharing the same fundamentally-joyful-natural-free-growing-up-experience as Wild Wild Sunflower Child Anna. I love that you insist on it for your bedtime story, and each time I read it to you, I feel like we're playing together. To finish this year's letter, here are the words to my favorite page, which reminds me of brand-new-four-year-old Zephyr:

Digging in the garden

kneeling on her knees,

leaning on her elbows

whispering to the seeds.

Anna sifts the soil

lightly through her fingers.

Anna talking, Anna walking

sunshine.

Grow, grow

grow in the garden, Anna.

All my Zephyr love,
Mommy