Dear nugget,
I don’t know if it’s just the mood I’m in or seeing your Christmas performance or the holiday season coming in, but I feel pretty grateful. For a lot of things but there’s something very special about you. I don’t know when or how we bonded (probably has to do with you always sleeping on me) but it’s been there for a long time and I can’t even remember ever truly valuing a human life until I met you. All the time, I’m met with reminders of how tiny you used to be. How you used to not be able to speak full sentences. The way you thought everything was hilarious – still do.
Words cannot really express the way you have lit up my heart for almost 9 years of your little life and while I’m eager to see who you’ll be, I’m holding on dearly that the next few years won’t flash as quickly as the last have.
I know it seems like I have some sort of favoritism for you but I can’t help it. I love you and all your siblings but this…it all started with you. You embody the best of all of the people who have raised you. You have our flaws and you have our quirks in a way that melts perfectly into who you are. Every day I am so proud that you have chosen us to be yours.
It takes a village, they say, and we certainly became a village around you. Because of you I have reached a relationship with your mother that I could never have even dreamed of. Because of you, our flawed family found a way to bind to each other – to raise you and protect you in ways we wish we had been ourselves. We laughed together, cried together and fought together in ways that only taught us to become better to ourselves and each other.
Without you, I don’t even know how possible that could have been. And I know you’re certainly not going to see this now or even understand it if you were to. But I hope that with ever moment that I’m with you, you understand how much I love you. You’ll get it one day.
Ruzelle Almonds 