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18 May

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Jasper is two years old today. Two years old. It doesn’t seem possible that so much time has passed since he was born. It doesn’t seem possible that so little time has passed since he was born. It doesn’t seem possible that this baby…

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… this sweet-faced cherub with the heart-crunchingly dimpled cheeks…

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… has become this boy – this precious boy – who is still so much baby, and yet, so not.

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Ah, my heart.

I celebrate this day and sing this day, but this day, this day, it squeezes my heart – it squeezes it hard, it squeezes it relentlessly – because I know that after this day comes another day, and then another, and then another, and soon he will be three and then he will be four and then he will be fourteen and then forty and even though he will always be my baby he will not always be this baby, this boy, this chubby-legged sprite with the sparkling eyes and the gap-toothed smile and the ever-present smudge of crud in his dimple.

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And I will miss this baby, this boy. I will miss him so much. Even though I know – I know – that I will love every moment of the man he will become, and even though I know that I have all the years of his boyhood ahead of me, my heart aches for the loss of him, the inevitable, ongoing loss as he walks his pace – steadier and steadier – away from me.

Happy birthday, baby. These are happy tears, really.