Happy Birthday Davies

I can’t quite believe it’s six years since you were born. In many ways the years have raced by and the memory of sitting looking into your eyes for the very first time and saying hello to you feels like it was just this morning. In many other ways it feels as if you have always been here, like I’ve known you forever.

Davies, you were the very first person I loved from the moment I met you, the very first person who’s life counted for more than mine, for whom there is nothing I wouldn’t do. The first person who made me want to be the best, do the best, make you proud of me. You have changed me in so many ways, not all of them positive, but all of them necessary and to be celebrated.

Your life is celebrated in the photos that adorn the walls of the house, the hours worth of home videos stacked in a box, the storage box sitting on top of your wardrobe filled with the cards sent to Daddy and I when you were born, the one or two outfits over the years I have not been able to get rid of, your hospital bracelet, your drawings pinned to the walls, how I know so much about dinosaurs, educational approaches and how I am so familiar with each of your passions – Wallace and Gromit being my best example. It will probably surprise everyone to learn that actually I have never sat and watched any of the films myself, yet I spent most of last week creating the props to turn your birthday party hall into a shrine of all things Aardman!

Your marks are left physically on me – I have the first silvery stretch marks on my tummy – later joined by the fresher ones from Scarlett, emotionally on me from the tears I shed over the difficulties of motherhood to the laughter you bring to my every waking moment and spiritually from where I hold no religious beliefs but do believe in the bond we share, your ability to take everything I can offer you, add to it and take it soaring far past where I could ever go.

I’m aware that you and I have an intense relationship, we spent many hours more together than plenty of other mothers and sons of similar ages. The closeness we share has the inevitable downside of too much time in each others company at times but I hope that as you grow older we will spent less time together perhaps, without ever losing what makes us Mummy and Davies.

Davies I am so very proud of you, as I watched you running surrounded by friends this weekend and you stopped as you dashed past just long enough to share with me ‘it’s hard work being the birthday boy, Mummy. Everyone wants to talk to me’ with a look of delight on your face. As you stood infront of your birthday cakes with the candles blazing, a room full of people who travelled to celebrate your birthday with you singing Happy Birthday to you, as you quietly told me later in the day what a wonderful party it had been and how much you’d loved it. When I kiss you goodnight and watch you slip back to babyhood as you go to sleep. When I hear once more from another adult what a lovely person you are.

Have a wonderful birthday darling, enjoy every moment. I love you. xxx