This is the child...

The first child I gave birth to turned 20 yesterday.

Damn.

This is the child that broke open my heart and released the unconditional love that God had planted inside.  This is the child that touched the place within that heart I never knew I had.  This is the child that showed me the good, loving and nurturing part of my soul.

This is the child that was born a week early according to the doctors.  That was crap.  I knew exactly when he was conceived because we had been trying for so long.  He was born exactly 40 weeks from that date.  He's a punctual child.

This is the child that came into the world face up which meant I had back labor that was excruciating.  I broke all of the capillaries in my face by pushing the wrong way (he was my first!).  I puked.  I whined.  I almost took out a nurse who thought she could motivate me by getting in my face and threatening to deliver him with forceps.  To which I replied, "That's an option?!  I don't care if you take this baby out through my NOSE, just get HIM OUT!"

Fortunately for her, she read the look on my husband's face and backed off.

This is the child that was born with optic nerve hypoplasia and had glasses at 18 months old.  I didn't like the "baby" glasses so I put "youth" glasses on him which were over sized and made him look exactly like the kid from Jerry MacGuire, Jonathan Lipnicki.  Talk about cute!  He was irresistable.  Still is.

This is the child that couldn't say refrigerator.  It came out refrigafrator.  Thankfully I have that on videotape.

This is the child that refused to acknowledge his twin brothers.  He asked me when they were going back.  He drew pictures of our family and didn't include them.  His preschool teachers didn't even know he had brothers.  When the twins went to preschool, for the sake of their teachers, I always dressed one in blue and one in red.  He never bothered to learn their names - he called them the blue brother and the red brother for years.

This is the child that is kind, and loving, and tender.  He pretty much keeps to himself but every once in awhile I catch sight of him helping one of our friend's kids and I'll see the future dad in him.  It brings tears to my eyes.

This is the child that has known what he wanted to do with his life since the age of 12 when I bought him a programming book for teens.  He's all about computers.

This is also the child that has a teacher buried deep inside and once he realizes it, will follow his bliss and become a computer science teacher.  He won't be rich but he'll be happy.

This is the child that occupies the space in my heart reserved only for him.

This is my child.

Happy Birthday son.  I love you.

Namaste.