It feels like you are about to go to college.
Dear Augustine,
Today you are four years old – an age that always felt to me as so impossibly young. The kind of age for a baby. Someone who still wears diapers and can talk but can’t be understood…until you became four.
You aren’t a baby, I’m not even comfortable using the word toddler anymore. We’ve spent the last week creating your own ‘Dragon Diary’ and you can just about write full words. You talk, I listen. I forget to buckle you up – you remind me. We need to get home – you can tell me the way. You’re a people.
Since, I’ve been wrong about what to expect my whole life, here’s a list of where we are:
- School : Letters and numbers are pretty well down
- Kid Stuff : Still sucking your thumb and playing with your ear. (which I can see even when you think you’re invisible)
- Hobbies : You recently got really into drawing – which, as you have pointed out, is not something I’m great at.
- Storytelling : You can tell stories, and I think a huge day for you is going to come this year – when you can actually read books.
- Extracurriculars : You love to dance and you really want to start taking swimming lessons again – soon.
You know, it’s often hard to see a kid grow up – it happens so slow and then suddenly they’re doing new things. For me, last night, you were climbing over the hassocks in the living room and I realized that this time last year I would have been rushing to make sure you weren’t gonna fall. I like never worry about you falling anymore. I remember watching kids run at the zoo and thinking ‘how do their parents not worry about them tumbling over’ and now I’m that parent watching you run off.
It’s too easy to get melancholy over children growing up, at least for me. It’s just – the truest thing anyone can come to understand about life is that the days (and nights) are long but the years are so so short. It’s already been a couple months since your first trip to Europe, it’s nearly a year since I held you up in Idaho to hear Santa announce your name, and it’s over a year since we were attacked by giraffes. All these things happened yesterday – not being hyperbolic – it seems like they all just happened. Though, I know they didn’t happen yesterday because yesterday was spent frantically buying presents for your birthday that somehow snuck up on all of us.
Yesterday was also spent walking you home from school – taking the long way.
I want to say something like ‘I can’t wait to see what this year brings’, but that doesn’t quite capture what I want to tell you. I’m not looking forward to any specific accomplishment, I’m just excited to get to know you better as you get to know yourself better. I’m excited to play with you – instead of beside or instead of you. I’m excited to see your ideas get more complex and creative and learn to create your life with you.
I can’t believe these are the things I’m saying about a four-year-old, but, when I look at you, you don’t seem four to me at all. When you go through your complex preparation for playing ‘trip’, you don’t seem to play like a toddler. When you engage with new experiences and ask questions and explore when we travel, you don’t think like what I would expect from a four year old.
So, as these parts of you become large and large portions of your personality, I’m going to take time to do the things that are for a four year old. I’m going to enjoy carrying you ’cause who knows how big you’ll be next year. I’m going to read you stories because soon you won’t need me. I’m going to include you in the things I like to do – so we don’t grow apart as you grow up.
Today, it feels like you are at the very, very end of being a baby/toddler,
Happy Birthday
I love you Augustine.
Dad