santos scribes

for gray

when you ask me this morning, over french toast and blueberries if you are my favorite child, i don’t know what to say. i want so badly to tell you the truth. you deserve the truth. i tell you the shortened version of your birth story instead; how brand new and familiar you felt when the midwife first placed you into my arms. how it was 5:45am that gray, mother’s day sunday in cambridge, when you became a baby and i became a mother. a short time later, on your way out the door to school, your last day of nine, i hold your gorgeous face in my hands and pull your perfect ear to my whispering lips. we share a truly extraordinary bond, you and i. you are the first person i have ever really known who not only looks like me, but who has the same fire and rage, the very same blood coursing through their veins, how amazing is that? tomorrow marks a decade since we first met and neither one of us has left the other and to me, that is a goddamn miracle. somewhere there is a parenting book cringing with authority right now; i know i share too much, too soon, but what else is there my love, except for this very moment? and if you really must know, sweet sweet child of mine, to me you are far more than my favorite, you are my first and my forever family.