Dearest Little One,
Very soon your will be turning one year old and that is a very big deal. It seems like only yesterday we were eagerly awaiting your arrival. Incredibly, a year ago yesterday was your due date.
Little one, you have been a delight as a baby. Your father and I are silly and we will celebrate your first birthday as a metaphorical metamorphosis out of the chrysalis of babyhood and into little boyhood, though you will probably not look much different or feel any different from day 365 of babyhood into day 1 of boyhood. It will be sad to say goodbye to this baby stage that you are in because it really has been wonderful.
You have been more than we could have ever hoped for. You are have been relaxed when we have needed to be. You were a mellow newborn who allowed us to sleep and ease into our new roles are parents of two children. You are quick to smile and love to cuddle and laugh. You hold your own with your big brother who loves to wrestle but is proud of his new role as “big brother”.
You are the second child, little one, and you come from a proud tradition of second children. I am the second as is your father. My mother and father were also the second children in their families. Unlike the firstborn, the second has to adapt to the structure the family has already set in place. When your brother was born, we, your father and I, had to change in order to accommodate your brother’s needs. We adapted to fit him since we never lived with a baby before and didn’t know how to do it at first. You could say he broke us in. When you were born, we already had ways of doing things so you had to learn how to fit into us and you have done it marvelously.
The thing about being the second is that when we talk about you we always seem to be describing you in comparison to your brother. We say things like, “Baby Nugget is mellower than his brother” or “Baby Nugget sure is cute but he is lighter sleeper than his brother”. That is the unfair thing about being the second I think, everyone looks at your through the lens of your sibling. Your older brother got to be viewed through his own lens because he came first. He will do many things before you so he will always be viewed as the original. There was nothing to compare him against until you came along so we didn’t compare him. But you don’t seem to be bothered by all this. You adore him. He handles you in a way that sometimes seems too rough. He squeezes you a little too tight around the belly or even the neck sometimes and you just laugh. I love to see you two relating.
I would like to be able to separate our experience with you as baby from the events of the last year of our life, but it seems impossible to do so. You were the baby we needed during the time when we needed it. You were a wonderful traveling companion during a time when we needed to be with my mother and the other members of my family. Your joyful smile and laughter gave all of us respite when we needed it most.
When you older brother was first born, he was unhappy a lot of the time during his first few months on earth. I did a lot of singing to try to calm us down. I needed the singing too. For some reason, I got addicted to listening to Beach Boys song “Sloop John B” and I would sing along or sing it unaccompanied to him often. I have since decided that it is his Baby Song. It fits him, the building harmonies remind he of how he has a personality that doesn’t give in easily. The lyrics go again again “I wanna go home, let me go home”. I felt like this is what he was saying to me when he was a little infant and he was crying all the time. But it is also a very beautifully musical and complex song and he is a loving and interesting boy.
It was only two days ago when I realized what your Baby Song is Little One. Your Baby Song is “Here Comes the Sun” sung by the Beatles, written by Geroge Harrison. I don’t think I ever sang this to you as a baby until I realized it was your song. But the song fits you.
Here comes the sun, the song goes. You were born at 4:23 in the morning and I saw the bright sunshine come through the hospital window about an hour after your birth while I was holding you.
It’s been a long cold lonely winter, the song goes. You were born at the end of winter in late February. The weather up until the week you were born was typical February, but there were temperatures in the 70’s a few days before you were born and on the day that you were born it was an unseasonably warm 52 degree day.
Mostly, I think this is your song because it is sunny and you make me and everyone else around you feel sunny. I don’t know what Beatle you will like best when you grow up but I guess I hope that you are in the George Harrison camp.
My favorite Beatle is George Harrison. I am a George girl. I liked John Lennon best first. I decided that I liked John Lennon when I watched someone figure skate to the song “Imagine” on a cold winter Saturday on television when I was in 9th grade. I remember thinking afterwards that I need to find out who sung that song. I thought it was a Beatles song but then I learned that John Lennon recorded it as a solo artist. I then subsequently bought the cassette tape for album Imagine at Walmart and listened to the track Imagine, a lot throughout high school and the early part of college.
Then in college, I became older and wiser, I thought, and fell in love for the first time and really listened to the song Hey Jude. I remember where I was when I decided that I was wrong about John Lennon and that Paul McCartney was the Beatle for me. I was in a fifteen passenger van riding on the longest bridge I had ever been on going over the Mississippi River in Louisiana watching the sun set over the Mississippi. Someone played a live recording of Paul McCartney singing Hey Jude and I realized that this was why people made a big deal about Paul McCartney. Maybe it was the setting sun but it was a moment of revelation for me. After that movement and for a period of time, I was a Paul girl.
Strangely, it was the in memorandum tributes that played on TV when George Harrison died that converted me into being a George girl. After watching them on multiple channels, I realized that I liked the George songs best. A few years later, I also got into listening to the Supergroup to which Harrison belonged, The Traveling Wilburys.
In my estimation, John Lennon is the patron saint of teenagers and those who see things as black and white. Paul McCartney is for romantics. I guess George is for quiet people and introspective people. He is our patron saint, maybe?
Sorry, Little One, I got off track. I hope that maybe you read this someday and understand that you have brought sunshine into our lives. We might compare you sometimes to your older brother but it does not mean that we do not see you as an individual. You will just have to bear with us. We will compare the two of you but doesn’t mean that we do not see you.
Love always,
Mom
Beautiful, your Baby, your Mr. Man, and you Mr. K are very lucky Men, indeed.