I’m not complaining about getting old, nor about being nearly sixty and having a son in his early twenties.  It’s grand.  Before I had Patrick, I experienced two or three miscarriages, and by the time I found out that I was pregnant with Patrick, I was 35 and convinced that I’d never be a parent.  Patrick changed that, as well as everything else about my life.

He came into the world laughing and has evoked laughter from me in some of my darkest hours.  He’s climbed mountains with me, journeyed to the back of caves holding my hand so I wouldn’t stumble, and taught me more about life than any ten other people whom I know combined.  He’s accepted everything thrown his way by life — not always with grace, but always with tenacity or at least, endurance.  From Patrick, I’ve learned about the practice of nonviolent communication which I’m trying to espouse.  From him, too, I got this notion, which I have not yet internalized but which resonates with me:  That the comments of others about me are not true just because they are said.  And, that those comments say more about the speaker than they do about the subject of the speech.

Patrick turns 23 at 1:50 p.m. today.  He’s flown from home for good now, living in Evanston, Illinois, starting the next phase of his life as a graduate student at Northwestern.  I’ve got pictures  and papers and plaques on the walls to remind me of how lucky I was to bear him.  And on a shelf in the basement there still sits a broken street light which he plans to repair some day.  It takes up a lot of space, but I’m not complaining.