fifteen

Fifteen!   

That’s a decade and a half, three full sets of hashmarks, and an “XV” in Roman numerals.  It’s ten fingers and five toes.  It’s 5,478 days.  

It’s also fifteen years of being a mom for me, your mom to be exact.  Ironically, we just finished a decade right before your fifteenth birthday so I’ve spent a little time looking back through pictures of ten years ago and then fifteen years ago, remembering who we were then.  The day you were born will forever mark the day that my life was changed for the better.  Everything I did from that day forward has been for or about you and your sister and I am so thankful.  I have learned what it is to be selfless, what it is to want more for someone else, and how it feels to pray expectantly and sometimes get more and sometimes different answers that I have to trust anyway.   

What a year you have had!  I think it’s funny the places you have ended up when you surely aren’t even trying to.  This year you’ve hung out with NFL players, NBA players, been behind the scenes of the Superbowl, shook hands with professional baseball players, got a personal video from Dak Prescott, sat on the set of the Rich Eisen show, and walked the course with  Justin Thomas .  You’ve been to the beach twice and even checked Los Angeles and Disneyland off of your bucket list.  Your art has ended up on the walls of St. Jude and on some custom designed fancy golf shoes for your buddy, Justin.  Your sweet face made quite a ripple with Chip and Joanna Gaines and they recognized you when they saw you again this year.  You even made it a few seconds on the Today show.  You have also fished and golfed and swam and tubed and kneeboarded and biked and adventured and if nothing else, EATEN your way through the year.  So much eating.  You like good and expensive food and a lot of it.  It’s hard to believe you ate nearly nothing for a year.  

But, mostly you’ve just been the best you that you can be.  You’ve grown the most this year in both height and in so many other ways.  You are nearly eye to eye with me, your shoes are huge, and your pants are constantly too short, but your hair is usually just right.  I absolutely love it all.  You’re just a bigger you with more humor and more personality which is pretty cool and super fun to hang out with.  You also got glasses which somehow ramped up your cool factor and made it even more impossible for me to be mad at you when I look at your face.  It’s funny how I can still see the little you still in the grown up version.  You are an even more astute observer of the world and while people are missing lots of things in life, you don’t miss a thing -  down to the tiniest detail that sets one thing apart from the next or one person apart from everyone else.  You’ve always been like that.  I’ll never forget you walking into preschool when you were three and nonchalantly telling the director that one of her fish was missing out of the tank.  You were the only one that noticed the dead fish in the whole school.  Your same old soul is now in a teenage body which makes you that much more endearing.  Plus the smile.  It’s still the best because we only get the real one when you’re actually pleased or impressed or something is super funny.  

You moved from middle school to high school this year.  I have never been so happy to end something as I was middle school for you because you worked so hard and it was exhausting to both be in and to watch.  (I certainly worked harder in your eighth grade year than in my own).   You walked across that stage at promotion effortlessly and no one would know that you’d caught up three academic years in one year or that one of your legs was made nearly entirely of metal.  I wanted to give a standing ovation for your comeback but I sat still and took a blurry video and then bought you some pancakes, so you’re welcome for that.  I’ll admit that I dreaded the move to high school and after I walked your schedule that first day with all the stairs and all the hallways, I told your daddy we were selling the house and moving to the middle of nowhere.  I think I overreacted a tad but I’m allowed.  I was totally wrong because high school looks pretty good on you.  I’ll be wrong and overreact a lot, so forgive me in advance.  I’m trying hard to be breezy.  I know you’re capable and this is just the beginning of me realizing how little control I actually have, but it’s not the end of me throwing in some wise council that will likely fall on your deaf ears because I’m still your mom and it’s my job. 

You and your sister have taught me how great it is to have big kids this year.  I love hanging with both of you and even though sometimes you pick at each other, it’s usually out of love (mostly).  I love watching you both form your own opinions and develop your own interests and humoring me when I make you do stuff like pick blueberries in the blazing heat for the nostalgia of the situation.  When one of you is not here, even for a night, we miss you like crazy!  You check on each other too and I’m so glad I have you to look after Kate because you do the best job - maybe too good in her eyes, but she’ll get over it.  Keep at it for the rest of her life.  She needs you.  

I loved taking you both to the West Coast this year and seeing things for the first time together.  You knew more about California that all of us - no surprise there - and navigated most of the trip based on what you’ve seen on YouTube, down to the wild goose chase for Hot Chicken in California.  Your need for chicken hardly compares to your daddy’s need to visit where every 80s hair band got their start and I feel sure we will be saying “right by the Whiskey a Go Go” in conversation for a long time.  

Bailey, you are one of a kind for sure.  I knew this from the beginning and so did your Nana - she understood you before anyone else and always told me that you would be just fine when I told her you were stubborn.  She was right, of course.  You are driven and motivated by exactly what you are interested in and will learn everything about whatever that may be.  Currently it’s golf and fishing, and but who knows what it will be next.  You've made me smarter with all the facts I now know on cars and dogs and certainly what can be found on the internet and how to work my phone.  I can only hope that you stumble upon a career that drives you to dig deeper into what you love to benefit someone else.  You never fail to be honest and shoot it straight, even when I don’t really want to hear it.  

I have loved watching you be you this year.  I saw you use what you’ve learned in life more than ever before and push yourself to try new things more than ever too.  I saw you work hard and see what redemption feels like when you did something that was so hard before and it’s much easier now.  It’s the hardest thing to realize you used be able to do something that you can no longer do and the easiest thing to feel sorry for yourself about that.  But, you never do.  You just get out there and get after it and learn it all over again.  There’s a lot of things that you’ve got no choice to face and a lot of times I just want to grab you up and run out of that hospital but you stay so I stay too.  You live an example that makes people forget how much you’ve been through because you work so hard at making it look so easy.  The transformation you have made in just two years is incredible.  You have grown in confidence and in spirit and it’s the most exciting thing to watch.  I have the best front row seat. 

This cancer thing is not what you asked for, and not something you want to discuss so you really don’t and that’s fine.  You don’t really have to.  We see you and you set the bar high for people three times your age.  You face those scans and those surgeries and whatever news comes your way with such tenacity and bravery that we all look like wimps.  You carry a lot in your head and your heart from what you’ve endured and watched other people endure.  As long as you lead with both your head and your heart, you can absolutely do anything.  God gave you exactly what you needed to do exactly what He’s designed you to do. 

I had no idea what these fifteen years would bring to me but you are by far one of my greatest gifts.  It’s an honor to be your mom.  

Happy Birthday!  

Now go study the book and I’ll take you to get your permit.  

Love, 

Mom