Today you are seven

I hope that you have met good parents and that you will have a good life. I wish for you a beautiful life, with a beautiful face and a beautiful heart. Think of your life as precious, because you are a beautiful flower.... You will remain in my heart forever.... --from I Wish for You a Beautiful Life: Letters from the Korean Birth Mothers of Ae Ran Won to Their Children

From my kitchen window I watch him swing, his legs and bare, dirty feet flung carelessly up in air. Back and forth, my son, my first-begotten, in his stained, Korean football "Be the Reds" shirt flies under the late summer sun. Surrounded by mixing bowls with the remnants of crusted cheesecake batter, and graham cracker crumbs, broken egg shells, and the left over apple sauce from lunch (that I am hurriedly trying to rinse off and stash into the dishwasher before the tinies awake) I cannot help but ache and cry a little at the image before me: My baby; the child I never thought possible; the promised one; tomorrow he will turn seven.

Tears are probably a bit much. After all, it is only seven, still a child, still dependent on me, his mother. But we are on the cusp of a change, perhaps for now it is only subtle, but the shift has commenced and we can only move forward. I know it. I want it. It is what we strive for as parents. Still he asks to have me lie in his bed and curls his growing self into the curve of my body like he did as an infant. But for how much longer? Still he asks me to play Star Wars guys and Legos but I believe he prefers his friend Meredith from across the street. Still he throws his arms around my neck and says that his sister and I are his favorite girls. But the hugs are more reserved, more coaxed than impetuous and kissing his mother on the lips, well that is beginning to lack in appeal.

Tonight I will open up the cabinet that holds within its steel jaws the limited pieces of my son's early life and will again digest its contents in full so that tomorrow we can together begin to tell anew the story of the little boy Jung-hyun, the boy who seven months after his birth in a Seoul hospital was held tightly in my arms as Thomas, my son. Tonight I will be distracted as my heart is transported to the land of the morning calm, to a faceless Korean woman, whose visage must surely bear resemblance to that of her son, and wonder which features are hers. For now, I can only imagine. I will pray for those people, my son's family in Korea, and will ache and cry for them as well because I am not the only mother thinking of her child on this memorable day. So swing on, my little one with head tilted back, jet black hair hanging long on your ears. Swing high and free, unhindered, and without worry. Swing recklessly, with vigor and zest for life. Laugh and scream. Run and play. Live joyously. Happy Birthday to you my beautiful one. Today you are seven.