To Audrey on Her Sixth Birthday

Dear Audrey,

In everyday conversation, mothers tend to use their children's births as reference points in the timeline of their lives.  "Before Audrey I worked sixty hours a week."  or "After Audrey I decided I never wanted to go back to work again, even though she kept me awake for a full year."  In the best way possible, your birth was a dramatic turning point in our lives, girlie.  You made me a mother...and your father a Papa...you made so many people so many things--Suddenly there were Grandma's and Grandpa's Aunties, Uncles, and a host of "Grand's" and "Great-Grand's" all out the wazoo.

Your first year was so much work for both of us; being your Mama was such overwhelmingly hard, gratifying work. Your simple existence forced me to morph into something I had never been before.  Now you're six years old--this amazing young girl who is so sweet and accommodating--so full of love and closely-guarded adventurous spirit. I told you five would be a breeze for us and it has been.

This past year, being your Mama, has been as carefree and lovely as drifting downstream. Dear, as a five-year-old, you've moved from one continent to the other and been on countless crazy adventures in between.  I've dragged you all over Vienna, Austria, London, and from one coast of the United States to the other--almost twice over. Somehow you accept it all with a grace beyond your years, a love of adventure and steely strength that many people will never know.

How is it possible that at six years old I can confidently say, without question, that I will always be able to count on you?  That's not even a burden for you--it's who you are--the one who can be counted on.  That's not to say you aren't allowed your struggles or trials or moments of basking in your right to act like a five (or six!) year old.  We've had our skirmishes, you and I, but we both know they're just the stuff skimmed off the surface.  Underneath, there is something concrete that we laid in place those first years together.  Our foundation is made of the same strong stuff that is inside of both of us, and it's held together by unshakeable love from the Universe itself.

I try not to cling to the past, my dear.  We've had incredible adventures together and if I took the time to turn my mind to it, it'd likely make me weepy and sentimental that we won't ever get to go back and live those escapades again.  But I don't.  I look forward.  I look to the present--where you're six--where I'd gladly travel the world with you or spend eternity enjoying the mind-blowing pleasures of the everyday in the way we only can together.

To say I love you madly would be the biggest understatement I could manage, my girl.  In the end there are no words for how much I love you, how lucky I feel to have been blessed to be your Mama.  There is no possible way to explain what it is like to see a piece of my own heart transformed into something beautiful and all it's own--knowing that you are simultaneously a part of me and something so inexplicably new. The world has never seen this Audrey before and I know to my bones that you are here to make "the Universe", as Mr. Happy-Happy would tell you, a place that will welcome in more love.

Lets do this year, kid--let's rock six together.  Let's make the world lovely and adventurous together...and on and on until forever.

Love,

Mama GiGi