a little story....

Today, Jonathan Robert is 15 years old. He has been a joy and a blessing since the day he was born. If you've been reading here for any length of time, you know that Jon was born a mere 10 months and two weeks after baby Robert was "born", stillborn. Now, if you've ever had a stillborn baby, you know that feeling of bottomless grief. A baby should be warm and breathe, move, snuggle...not just lie there all floppy with the eyes closed. It's torture, it's heart wrenching, and you would give your very soul to have that baby take a breath and just be alive. But instead, you have to say goodbye. You have to wrap that baby tenderly in his little hospital blanket, the very same kind of blanket that all his siblings were swaddled in, while they cried and nursed and were marveled at in. Then you have to say goodbye.

Maybe I should have had more time to grieve, but when I found out we were expecting another baby, I didn't let the joy bubble up. I was too afraid to. I was the very definition of "cautiously optimistic". But when Jonathan was born, and he cried, and he was warm and alive and needed to be nursed, I was beside myself with joy, feet off the ground, floating, ridiculously happy. He was darling and perfect and healing, and we all loved him immensely.

Maybe it's not fair to Jon that our joy in him is tied to our deep sadness at the loss of his brother, but that's the way it is. And Jon himself can take the credit for being such a good kid. He has chosen to be kind, to be forgiving, to be gentle. He isn't perfect, he is very witty and nothing is funnier than mocking your mama, and he can talk back, but he's pretty quick to knock it off, and if necessary, apologize. I realize that when you're a teenager, your mom is old and silly. That's just how it is, too.

But anyway, today is his birthday. And I'm very thankful for him. For all of them.

The day after tomorrow, some of us are heading down to Fairfax, Virginia, bright and early in the morning, with our wedding clothes packed. Most of the kids will be making it to the wedding, and that in itself is exciting.