All the Love I Have for You

I wrote this for my son’s 3rd birthday:

Some love is loud. It demands to be seen, to be felt, to be screamed to the heavens. It’s the love that doesn’t need to be announced because it bolts right in. This is the kind we reserve for the big moments—birthdays, milestones, tiny victories. When we want to tell the world that look. Look what I have. Look what I love.

And then some love is quiet. It exists in silence, when the world is still and no one’s watching. It’s the love you want to selfishly preserve for yourself because saying it out loud makes it fragile. Like if you name it, you let the world take a piece of it from you.

And then there’s love that’s painful. The kind of love that you choose again and again, even when it drains you. The one that demands you to show up even when you’re tired. The love that makes you scared. Worried. Anxious. It demands everything yet leaves you wondering if you’ve given enough.

But there’s love that is peaceful. The kind that doesn’t need defining. Doesn’t need justification. Love that’s just there.

You might be wondering where you fit into this, my love. My son. My beginning and my becoming.

The truth is… you are in all of it.

My love for you is loud. From the moment I knew you existed, I wanted to tell the world about you. That I had you. That you were mine. I found ways to bring you into every conversation. I told everyone about you, like it was the most important thing they could ever know about me—because it is.

But my love for you is also quiet. When I saw your eyes look back into mine, that first day in that hospital room, I wanted to freeze time. I wanted to keep you to myself. I wanted to whisper and not let anyone hear. Because that moment was ours. And now, it’s in the hush of our mornings. In the weight of your head on my chest. In the way I watch you sleep and feel this ache in my chest that’s so full it almost hurts. I’ve had moments with you where time slowed down and I wished I could stay there forever. Just you and me. No noise. No world. Just love.

And yes, my love for you is also painful. I have come to accept that every single day I spend with you is every single day my heart floats outside of my body. Out in the open, because you carry it with you. It’s the fear and the anxiety of never wanting anything to happen to you. I’ve never been this vulnerable, and yet I’d choose this feeling a million times over if it means I get to be here.

But still, my love for you is peaceful. My love for you is here. You don’t have to demand it, you don’t even have to earn it. It’s here and it always will be.

And even now, after all these words, I still feel like I haven’t said it right. That somehow, even my best thought-out words are not enough to describe the depth, the breadth, the intensity of this feeling. Maybe my love is boundless. Maybe it’s sacred. Maybe it’s messy and whole and wild and soft and infinite.

Until I find the words that are big enough—true enough—I’ll keep loving you the only way I know how.

Loud and quiet. Steady and aching. With fear in my chest and peace in my arms. In all ways, with every fragment of my being.

Again and again and again.