Tripp,
I’m not sure a birthday will ever come around when it doesn’t take me by surprise at just how fast the months have passed. It feels like just moments ago since I last sat here, trying to find the words to write to you on your fourteenth birthday, and yet here we are, fifteen, and this year has seen me finally admitting to myself that you are no longer that tiny baby placed in my arms, nor the little boy who held my hand and called me Mommy, all of those years ago. Instead, you have grown into the most incredible, handsome, and charismatic young man, and there hasn’t been a single day of these last fifteen years when I haven’t pinched myself that you are mine.
As I sit in the living room or make dinner and listen to your choice of music, I can still remember how Ahma and Granddaddy would voice their opinion on how loud or inappropriate the lyrics were and how I would roll my eyes in annoyance. Or when I didn’t get the grade they expected of me, yet last week, sitting beside you in the car eat our Bodo’s, I realized how spending those moments together are so important as they are giving me my own lesson of parenthood. Because those snippets of conversation are few and far between these days and the truth is, between school, your friends, soccer, and your Dad’s, those snatched moments are always going to be worth sitting around waiting for…not so much the D on Powerschool that prompted the discussion!
And I guess I’ve learned that’s what it’s all about when you have an active teen, just making the most of every snatched moment and holding on to it until the next one comes around. It’s the moments, like Sunday, when you leant your head on my shoulder after getting your phone fixed, the moments we sit down together at dinner, my favorite time of day, where the three of us talk and eat until one of us busts out laughing spitting milk out of our nostrils!!
It’s the moments when you come home from school and tell me about your day, albeit with your head in your phone and in the pantry looking for a large “snack” before practice. It’s the moments you tell me about your life with your Dad with your little sister and Slick you have there, or when you return home to us after the week and swoop Charleston up into your arms, and laugh with Baxter, I see how being a big brother means everything to you. It’s the moments you send me text messages out of the blue, the phone calls when you’re at your Dads. It’s the moments when you ask for my opinion, or my advice, when you tell me something you aren’t even sure I’m going to want to want to hear, but you trust me enough to say it anyway.
And although these small moments may not sound a lot to some, they are everything to me Tripp. They are the moments which keep me going as the days fly by and we barely see one another, when the weeks turn to months and you come and go from one place to the next. And it’s these little moments which bring you back to me during these teenage years where you need me less and less. I love seeing you spread your wings, taking on new challenges, classes, clubs at school, picking up more hours reffing to save money, but I’ll be holding onto these little moments of ours over the next few years, no matter how old you get.
I know I say it every year, but there is something so very special about the one who makes you a Mommy and you will always have that special little piece of my heart for making my dreams come true. I am so excited to see what the coming year has in store for you, and for the three of us, and hopefully in twelve months time when I’m sitting here writing your next letter, I’ll have just as many precious moments to share. And maybe even one or two more….
Happy 15th Birthday, Trippy.
I love you to the moon and back…even when you can’t see me, I love you ALL THE TIME!!
XOXO
Momma
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