This weekend you turned 11. We celebrated with a pizza party, followed by a showing of The Force Awakens projected onto the wall of our roof room, and then a sleepover in the same roof room. I don't think you boys got much sleep up there, as we heard you jumping on the trampoline over our heads at around midnight. But the rule in our house is no sleepovers until you are ten. And then we make up for it, I guess, by letting you stay up late and play.
Our Eugenious. You are one special kid, son. Always have been. You could point out almost any country on the world map before you were out of diapers, and nowadays you use words that I myself don't always know the meaning of.
You are steady and strong. You are urgent. You are precise.
You make me laugh. I love it that your humor is smart, too; you could cut-up with a room full of 50-year-old professors.
Gene, I am proud of you. I pray for you each day. I wonder about you, as I catch glimpses of the man that is coming. To what corners of the earth will G0D call you? To what adventures are you to lay claim?
I smile to think about your wife, who will need to be a very tender person, and yet have the inner strength of rebar. She will learn how happy you can be with so little, so long as changes come slowly, and with plenty of notice. She'll learn how to coax you out of a blue mood by suggesting a shared task, or by asking for your opinion on a matter.
But for now I'm the lady in your life, and I couldn't possibly be any happier about it. HAPPY 11th BIRTHDAY, SON!
All my love forever,
Mama
