From family to acquaintances, it seemed everyone had an opinion to share.
When the bloodwork came back, your dad and I couldn’t help but laugh. A third boy! Let the adventures begin! That evening on the back porch, we toasted with your thrilled big brothers, indulging in blue ice cream cones that dripped and stained our fingers like Smurfs. We discussed potential names for you and all the things we would teach you. But even in that moment of joy, I braced myself for the comments I anticipated. From relatives to strangers, everyone had something to say: that I would be the first to enter Heaven after raising all those boys, that at least I could recycle the clothes, and that sometimes the doctor’s test results get mixed up, so I should really check again. I dreaded the Target checkout lines and playground benches where people would glance at your brothers and raise their eyebrows at my belly—another boy? Their faces twisted into expressions of pity when I nodded and smiled. One woman even offered me condolences, as if it were a tragedy rather than a blessing, as if your little feet weren’t currently kicking my ribs, your tiny heart beating inside me, a miracle. I never had the right response in those moments, so let me express it now: don’t ever let someone else’s opinion dull your joy. Because joy is what I felt at the thought of your face and everything you would become. And just so you know, I never wanted anyone but you.
You were my easiest delivery, arriving on your grandmother’s birthday, just in time for Christmas. Your brothers rushed us upstairs to mark your height on the bathroom doorframe with black sharpie. Twenty-one inches tall. We gave you a grand name, one worthy of saints and kings, and placed you on the kitchen island, where you observed the chaos with furrowed brows. We marveled at how you resembled your brothers (the light peach-fuzzed hair, the pouty lips, the soft rolls of your thighs) while also being entirely your own person. By ten months, you were running, preferring nudity, always in search of wheels to make you go faster! All I wanted was to slow you down, to freeze the moment when your dimpled baby hands patted my cheek after your bath, or to hold the hot weight of you as you drifted to sleep in my lap.
Now, the bathroom doorframe is etched with your name, stretching higher than the doorknob. Each morning, you burst into the kitchen, arms wide, eager to crack the eggs. You dress yourself (a tiger costume daily, if you had your way) and manage your own shoes, biting your tongue as you align the Velcro. On pleasant days, you draw with chalk in the driveway while I load the car, rush back for forgotten water bottles, and call for everyone to finish their breakfast. Sometimes your siblings join in the chalk fun; sometimes they don’t. It doesn’t faze you either way. I watch you create winding rattlesnakes and sharks with rainbow fins. How could it have been anyone but you?
To those who pitied me for my third son, I feel sorry for them, that they will never witness how passionately you dig and how gently you hold worms, how you dance to Lady Gaga and pound your chest like King Kong, or how you lie on your back tracing airplane lines in the sky. I wish the entire world could know you as I do. They’d be better for it. You are loved, capable, and destined to accomplish amazing things. And best of all, you are mine.
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