Today he turns 6, this second boy who stole my heart.
It’s hard to believe he is that old. Every time I look at him now I see a boy, not even little anymore. Just a boy with skinny little legs and big feet and a smile that can light the whole house on fire.
Time has flown so fast I want to grab it all back. I want to savor it right now, this moment. I want to hold him while he will still let me, but the problem is, I don’t ever want to let him go.
This weekend we cut a cookie cake and played Spider-Man games and watched him open presents like LEGOs instead of baby blocks, and I kept thinking about how these last six years have gone and how the next six will go, and I feel sad and glad and scared and excited all at the same time.
He is one of the most remarkable children I have ever known.
Just the other day, when I was in the middle of beating myself up about a to-do list largely left undone, with the potential to derail a whole week’s plans, in walked my boy, just home from school, with a yellow flower he’d made and another he’d picked. He was grinning.
“I know you’re working,” he said. “But this is for you.”
He kissed me and wrapped his arms around me in a tight hug, and then he was gone.
For six years I have watched this boy grow into his name. Asa. Healer.
For six years he has been healing holes in our home.
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We didn’t even know if it was the right time to try for another baby.
Four months before, I had lost my grandmother, and I was still reeling from her death, weeping every time someone mentioned the name grandma, even though she was called Memaw.
And, at the heart of it, I was afraid I could not love another child as deeply as I loved the first. Most mothers of one child worry about this, because, until it happens, we cannot imagine how a heart can expand its body borders so it’s wide enough to hold multiple children.
But then I took that pregnancy test, and it said no, and I cried, afraid we wouldn’t be able to have another baby because so many friends couldn’t.
That when I knew just how desperately I wanted another.
Two weeks later I took another pregnancy test, convinced the first one was wrong because I could hardly climb out of bed in the morning and I fell asleep while my 18-month-old was eating his lunch even though the choking fear was right up there with the drowning fear and the getting-hit-by-a-car fear, ever-present in my mind.
This time the test said yes and I smiled a little, knowing already who he would be.
He would be called Asa. Healer. Zane. Everything that is good and beautiful.
Already, just a few weeks in, this baby was healing my heart, glowing new life in the space my Memaw had taken with her. I knew she would want me to be happy, even in grief. And so I let myself be, waiting to meet another little piece of perfection that might carry her generosity or her spirit or that infectious laugh (It was the laugh he would carry on).
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He doesn’t even know all the ways he has healed.
In our home, this second boy is the one who comes home from school and tells each one of his stays-at-home brothers how much he missed them while he was away. He is the one who will catch me unaware when I am lost in thought, washing the dishes that never seem to ever be done, and tell me, “You’re doing such a great job doing those dishes, Mama,” and make me actually want to do them. He is the one who will open doors for his brothers and turn on light switches for the ones too short to reach them and comfort his baby brother when he’s crying.
He has more friends than I can keep up with, and he’s the example his teacher uses for a helpful spirit and a kind heart, and he’s more often than not an objective mediator between his fist-fighting brothers.
When I asked him today what he’s been put on this earth to do, his answer was simple and lovely, an honest picture of who he is at heart.
“To help people,” he said.
Yes. Of course. He has been living into that purpose since he was born.
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He slid into the world after six hours of labor and three good pushes. He was the easiest labor of all.
When they put him in my arms, though, I thought they’d made a mistake. This isn’t my baby, I thought. He doesn’t look anything like the other one.
That mama bond with the first was instantaneous and deep, and I realized later it was because looking at him was like looking into a time-machine mirror of me as a baby.
But this second one, he had blue eyes that would stay blue and the full lips of his daddy and no hair and red splotches all over his body from a labor quick and jarring.
I worried that I would not be able to love him after all.
But I shouldn’t have worried. My love bloomed and uncurled over those days and weeks and months that followed his birthing day.
It was easy to love him. He smiled before any of the others, and he let me hold him as much as I wanted, and there was something in those eyes that could give such courage to an overwhelmed-mama heart.
When his older brother threw a fit because he was tired of sharing Mama’s attention, my baby waited calmly to be fed, like it was really no big deal. When my belly started growing with baby number 3 five months after he was born, he just watched in awe and excitement that there would be another baby. When his mama could not play blocks with him because she had to feed the new baby, even though he was still a baby, he did not fuss or throw blocks in anger like his older brother would have done in his place. He just came to sit by me, kissing his brother’s forehead and waiting for the time when Mama would be free to play.
He is the easiest boy I’ve ever had.
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There is a danger in this easy.
Sometimes we forget that he has needs, too, because he is kind and calm and flexible and unworried and sweet, a personality that often gets lost in all our crazy. Sometimes we forget that he has his own plans, because he is so good at following everyone else’s. Sometimes we forget that he should not always be expected to act like who he is.
We’ve tried to remind him of this every now and then, because the danger in going with the flow and doing what you’re told all the time and always behaving in the way that’s expected is that you never get to try out rebellion.
Rebellion can be good for us, when used well. It can teach us that we are loved not just for our abilities and our behaviors but for just being us. It can teach us that we are accepted for who we are and not who others expect us to be. It can teach us that we have room to make mistakes, too.
Encouraging rebellion in this precious boy has taken intention and hard work, because he’s the kid who’s happy to stand in front of his whole school and accept that Star award for exemplary behavior and obedience.
But this year I have watched him grow from a boy who had to make sure he was doing everything perfectly right before he tried anything new to a boy who just leaps into the unknown. I have watched him decide for himself that his art is good. I have watched him test limits and slide into a new understanding of what it means to grow up and make his own decisions. And through it all he has remained a healer. Everything that is good and beautiful.
How beautiful it’s been.
Happy birthday, sweet Asa. I am so glad you are mine.
This is an excerpt from We Count it All Joy: Essays, which will release in spring 2017.
