"You're overdue, and this is gonna be a big baby."Those were the words I barely heard fourteen years and one day ago. Contrary to everything I wanted, everything I had planned for, my doctor wanted to induce labor. That was the last time I would let a doctor talk me into such a thing. Every birth after this one would be a home birth.
Houdin came into this world stretching over the boundaries. His feet were too large to be contained on the footprint paper, and the birth record showed his arrival weight at 9 lbs 10 oz. Seven days later, when I went in to have his circumcision performed (the last time for me to do that to a baby, too) he weighed almost twelve pounds. It was then that the mistake was discovered: his birth weight had been transposed and he had weighed 10 lbs 9 oz.
Houdin's character also entered this world in a big way. His first words were "Go 'WAY!" and "SHUB UP!" which were words we didn't allow in our house, but he absorbed them from somewhere in his environment. He took to singing right away and has continued singing ever since.
Today, I celebrate the birth of a baby as well as the growth of a young man. He has talents and abilities that I don't even pretend to understand. He has no inhibitions and won't take no for an answer. This has been both a source of pain and pride for me, his mother. I keep praying over him that God will help to channel those talents and abilities into something amazing, something wonderful.
I'm sure I'm not the only mother who was taken a sidelong glance at her teenaged son and wondered, "Where did you come from?" Not yet a man, no longer a boy, caught between here and there. Just beginning to be intrigued by girls, just beginning to struggle with the cracking of his voice, just beginning to know his own strength and realize his own weaknesses. "Where did you come from?" I wonder. I can barely remember how he slipped from his infancy to now.
A son is a gift and a challenge. As I look at these photos of my boy, my man-child, I pray that I can be better for him, that I can recognize his talents and abilities every day, and that I can train him up in the way HE should go, not stamp him with a cookie cutter mold and expect him to fall in line with the rest of the world.
Happy birthday, Houdin. You truly amaze me.
