About a Boy

I finished my work for the day, tucked away my computer, and put up the footrest of my recliner with a sigh. Just as I was getting all nice and dozey, a thought bounced into my head that made me sit up straight. Tomorrow was my eldest son's birthday . . . and he was probably expecting me to actually DO something about that!

Not that his expectations would be very high. I've never been one of those moms who plan birthday parties with balloons and a clown named Bobo and a race car birthday cake. My kids have learned

that when it comes to birthdays, often the best they can expect is a gift or two wrapped hastily in a double layer of plastic bags from Dollar General. I can never find my stash of balloons, and the only Bobo I know is busy finding Bigfoot. I did make a shaped cake once, a giant E, which I frosted with chocolate pudding just to see if it would work. (It doesn't.)

It's not that I don't care about my children. I want them to have a happy day and all. It's just that . . . really, when it comes right down to it, a birthday is just a day.

That realization is a step on the passage to adulthood, I think. At some point you become aware that this day, the one that for so many years felt like Something Truly Special, is no different than the one before or after it. You still have to go to work and make the bed. It's just a day.

I didn't blow up balloons for Isaac. The poor kid didn't get a fancy meal, and his cake-substitute brownies weren't even from scratch.

But when my birthday boy padded into the not-decorated kitchen that morning with rumpled hair and a sleepy grin, I looked at him and thought, on this day that was his day, of all that he had been, and all that he would be.

I saw again the little boy with big brown eyes who used to stand peeking over the edge of my bed, waiting for me to wake up. I saw the first grader who was afraid he would get sucked up by the vacuum cleaner or whirled down the bathtub drain, the knob-kneed slugger taking a tighter grip on his Little League bat.

I saw in this talling, slightly goofy high schooler the young man who will someday walk me down the aisle at his own wedding. The man who will cradle my grandchildren in his arms, who will hold my hand in the nursing home.

Yes. Isaac's birthday was just a day. A day for me. A day to remember how much I love this kid. A day to be thankful for how much he loves me.

 My son's birthday is not about the day. It's about the boy.

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Christmas is coming, as it seems to do every year. You want to know something? Sometimes - please don't tell anyone, because they might not understand - sometimes I'm just not in the mood for it.

It's just so much. Such a big holiday, with so many expectations attached. Expectations that I can't possibly meet.  The gifts, the tree, the trimmings, the travel; it's all more than I have the time or energy to think about.

And when I do think about it, it sometimes strikes me that it's just plain silly. So much planning and preparation for the sake of one day, one day that isn't even all that special, really. Yes, it's a birthday. But no matter how much you fluff it up, a birthday is just a day.

Christmas is, indeed, just a day. A day to remember a rough foodbox cradle, and a God who was big enough to make Himself small enough to fit in it. A day to look back at a Boy who followed in His father's footsteps, learned a carpenter's trade, walked as one of us. A day to look forward to the hill, and the cross, and the stone rolled away, and a life laid down and picked up again in the same way it began: full of the deepest, most un-understandable love.

I'm sure we'll get some decorations up in the house soon, and maybe I'll even find time to make my mom's favorite candy cane cookies. But what I'd really like this Christmas is to let it be just a day. A day to close my eyes and take a minute with my Savior. To remember how much I need Him. To be thankful for how much He loves me.

Christmas, with all its fluff and frippery, isn't about the day.

It's about the Boy.

First published in The Alpena News, December 13, 2014