Frankie's 1

Frankie, You are 1 Year Old.

A year ago your mom and I had packed bags for the night we went into the hospital to have you. It had been a hot summer and was still hot in early September when you were supposed to arrive, so I packed more like I was going on vacation to Florida. Your mom had to labor overnight, and I tried to sleep in the recliner next to the bed. I was unprepared for how cold the labor and delivery wing would be. It was so cold, and the only warm thing I had packed was one pair of sweatpants. I had to put my arms through the legs and pull the butt over my head to get warm enough to sleep. I can’t say I’ve felt much more prepared for any of the days since. Thankfully, you are very forgiving and always let me and Mom figure it out as we go.

Before you, time as an adult kind of ran together. There was some sense of the years passing more or less quickly but time was something happening in the background. Now that you are here I am obsessed with time: How many minutes you have napped for. How long a day away from you at work is. How much you change in a month, and how after just a year it feels like you’ve always been with us. It is funny how you have passed over little, almost imperceptible, checkpoints of personhood in that time. We signed you up for swim lessons and your mom bought you a little bag to bring a change of clothes and a new diaper to the pool. It was a small pink gym bag with letters sewn on it that said “MY STUFF.” I was nearly brought to tears at the idea of you having “stuff” of your own and places to be when just a few weeks earlier you were only a little lump we fed and moved around the house.

There are lots of parts to being a person you don’t realize are really skills to be learned. We had to teach you how to go to sleep, how to entertain yourself, how to comfort yourself. These were hard, and it makes me scared to think about you getting older and the skills getting harder: How to make a friend. How to be kind. When it’s ok to be angry. Let’s hope when those come up I’m not still pulling my proverbial sweatpants over my head.

By far the biggest change this year is how we became a family. There’s nothing I want to do that I wouldn’t rather do with you and your mom. We joked before you came that we’d “have a little stranger living with us” but that couldn’t be further from the truth; you fit right in and make our little unit whole. You truly couldn’t be anyone other than who you are, and who you are becoming. Some wisdom that I can’t take credit for is making sure you always know the answer to these four questions:

Do you know that I love you?
Do you know that I love your mother?
Do you know you are beautiful?
Do you know that I’m proud of who you are?

My most important job is helping you become whoever you are. I am writing to remind myself as much as to tell you.

Love,

Dad