Henry

It's Henry's eighth birthday today and I am finding it hard to write how much he means to me. I honestly sometimes feel that it is more than other people feel about their own children. How can everybody feel love this strong. My whole life was turned on its head by him. I can't watch dramatic movies, or even trailers for movies, like that one that is out right now about the boy who lost his father in 911. I literally had to leave the living room when the commercial for it showed.

I wake up every morning to see him. I get him off of the bus everyday. I sit with him everyday and do his homework with him. I ask about what he has learned in school. We sit together every night for dinner. I read to him every night before bed. I sit on his bed and close his day, and after he is asleep, I check every night .... honestly.... to make sure he is still there, breathing, ok. I have never known this kind of love. Its changed everything about me. I even think that maybe I am going overboard, that maybe it can be too much, that it is unhealthy. I need to give him room to breathe, to be himself. And I do, as much as I can bear.

I know that he will, at times, rebel. He will need me to back off. And I will, but I want you to know Henry, if you ever read this, that it will be an act of supreme will power, one that I can't see myself being capable of right now, that will allow me to let you push away.

But for now, when you sit next to me on the couch and naturally feel the need to push in close to me, and put your face in front of mine because you have a question about what super powers Green Arrow has, or what pokemon I like better, or to ask me every question that you can think of about microbial life, that it is the best thing I have ever experienced, and that my life has been remade in knowing you.

Happy eighth birthday Henry

Dad