A Letter to My Firstborn Dear Firstborn: Life is sometimes compared to a roller coaster, among other things, because whether or not you want to get on and go for the ride is rarely ever the point or always a choice that is yours to make.  Either way you will inevitably be loosely buckled in and taken on a crazy and bumpy ride with or without your consent.  Everyone is on their own roller coaster and, while some other rides may seem similar, they are not the same.  Through various stages of life, rides can be so smooth that they might even be described as boring or pleasantly monotonous.  While other times the ride is unpredictable, filled with chaos and uncertainty.  It is that part of the ride that can feel overwhelming as you will realize that you have no control over the unforeseen, and, let’s face it, mostly involuntary, dizzying twists and turns or ups and downs.  Even when you have had enough and beg for it stop so that you can get off and regain your footing on steady ground, somehow you will find the courage to stay on.  After all, the only thing about the ride that you are controlling is how you react and respond to it.  As parents, we are on an endless roller coaster ride.  It’s interesting because it is not something that is necessarily discussed or overly considered before we bring home our adorable little bundles of pure joy and innocence.  Parents are dreamers who are seemingly suspended in a temporary state of delirious bliss when their children are babies.  At least that was my experience.  Truth be told, and especially during the early days, parents are not exactly forward thinkers when it comes to their children.  For many, you are just so happy to have a baby in your arms that you don’t often think about how life is going to look in 5, 10 or even 15 years.  The days somehow move slower, one bleeding into the next.  You buy a special book so that you can memorialize all of your baby’s firsts – the first smile, the first time they roll over from back to belly, their first spoonful of solid food, their first word, their first step unassisted, and the list of firsts goes on and on. Those are the years when you follow a chart that breaks down each common milestone and an expected age by which it should be met, and if it is not, you grab your keys and your precious baby and hightail it to the doctor to find out what is wrong with them.  You are frequently reminded to ‘live in the moment’, that ‘the days are long, but the years are short’, and ‘don’t worry, it’s just a phase’.  And all of those things are true.   But you don’t realize how true they are until each of those moments or phases passes by in the blink of an eye and you find yourself nostalgically looking back on them with a wide-range of raw emotions. Those are the moments that you would like to freeze in time.  When you find yourself on your knees begging time to stand still, or at least slow down for a little while, to give you a chance to adjust to the changes that are happening all too quickly and seem to move at a warped speed the older your children get.  Each stage stealthily appears out of nowhere, and then just as suddenly as it arrived, it is gone leaving in its wake nothing more than a memory.  Time is uncooperative like that, and stops for no one.  You know that your child will never be these ages again and you want to hold them there as long as possible.  Because no matter what and come what may, they will always be your baby regardless of how big they get or how quickly they move through each one of life’s stages. You are reaching an important milestone in the coming days.  Middle school graduation, and then you will head to high school in just a few short months.  I don’t know exactly how we got here, but nevertheless, here we are.  Saying that I’m proud of you is simply not enough as it woefully understates the depth of love and admiration that I have for you.  I started this last year of your time in middle school with no particular expectations.  The beginning of the year felt like any other school year getting you and your siblings back into the routine of waking up earlier and prepared for the academic workload and extracurricular activities.  As usual, our days filled up quickly with the constant movement and scheduling that consumes our minds giving us little, if any, time to pause or reflect.   And then it happened.  It was at the end of November, I think, when I received an email from the school asking for a baby picture of you for the yearbook.  That email was immediately followed up by another notice requesting that I write a letter to you which would go in the yearbook next to your baby picture.  As a writer, this task should not have overwhelmed me to the degree that it did.  I prefer to take the time that I need to consider my words carefully before I am comfortable making them available for eyes other than my own.  The pressure began to mount as I was feeling rushed to summon to the surface the feelings and emotions that I was not yet prepared to face, all the while knowing that the one person who I needed to reach and who would feel the depth of my words the most would be you.  And as Mark Twain said, “The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter.  ‘Tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”  Truer words have never been spoken and are words …