Happy Birthday, Eliza

Dearest Eliza,

I can hardly believe that you’re already six years old. You are so big and strong and healthy and smart and wonderful. I am grateful to have you. I am grateful to be here with you.  

Each year, when I write these, I try to avoid reading the ones that I wrote before. I want each year to be based upon our family right now, upon who you are right now. But this year, I went back and read the very first one that I wrote to you. I had forgotten some of the things that happened (which is why I keep this blog), and I was reminded of how strong my spiritual life was at that time.

My relationship with God has changed in the intervening years. I am less fervent but more confident. Your faith is innocent and precious and reminds me that even though your daddy and I don’t take you and Griff to church, we are instilling in you our core spiritual beliefs. I’m quite sure that when we do go back to church, it will most likely be at your request, and I thank you for that.

You’re a lot like me, little bit. You remind me of the things that I used to love about myself and have either ignored in favor of family responsibility or forgotten was a virtue. I’m thinking a lot these days about my next birthday - 40! - and about what turning 40 means to me. I was born when my grandmother was 40, and I’m going to have a kindergartener. It’s an odd contrast, but one that I’m happy to experience.

You are bossy and determined and insistent. You are smart and funny, and you like to ride your scooter in the house while wearing a princess nightgown. You are currently trying to decide which boy you will marry, which drives your poor daddy crazy. You still think your brother hung the moon.

You’ve named my kitchen ‘Chel’s Cafe’ and you like to be the sous chef, waitress and general girl in charge. You interviewed your dad just last night to determine if he was fit to continue in his job as head dishwasher.

I said it years ago, and I say it today… our family needed an Eliza. We just didn’t know it.

We love you.

Mama

(P.S. A very happy birthday, too, to Harrison, whose wonderful mama came to visit me the night you were born, even though it was Harrison’s first birthday. And a very happy birthday to your Mick, who never expected his first granddaughter to share his birthday.)

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