My Friend Arthur

The thing that blows me away the most about being Arthur's mom is how much my friend he's become. I told Justin I didn't know how there could be enough love for anyone else in our family, were we to have a second child, and he replied (I'm paraphrasing), "Love doesn't divide with children, it grows. There's just more love when they come along." And I found that to be so amazingly true. Waiting eleven years to become parents, I had grown to fear that having a child would take us away from each other, but now I find myself thinking about that schoolhouse rock song all the time: "Three, oh three, it's a magic number."

I love letting him be Arthur, watching him become his own man. I like the way he takes a bite out of every vegetable or ravioli on the plate, each in turn, then finishes them at last after he's gone through his ritual. I love that he would eat three bananas in a sitting if we allowed him to (but of course, we don't!), and that his favorite thing in the whole world is to drum, even if it's just with his hands on a table, and that he loves to read and pets animals gently like an adult does. He has all these little quirks that tell me he is not us, he is not really mine, he is himself, belongs only to him. Just as all parents feel, I know that I am extraordinarily lucky to be the woman who gets to help him find that person inside himself, a responsibility I don't take lightly.

I like the way he has little inside jokes with me and little inside jokes with Justin and Justin and I have our little inside jokes. Justin calls us "my people." I love that, too.