For My New Teenager

The pastor asked us to choose some verses for the ceremony, and--because I'd conceived you on my twenty-fifth birthday--I chose James 1:17. I requested it read out of King James, where it's most beautiful.

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. 

This remains my Cade verse. Memorize and carry it; break it into pieces-parts if ever things seem dark, if ever you're in need of a little light. I've heard your profession of faith; I've witnessed your submersion in the waters of baptism; the steadfast Father of lights belongs to you. He has fixed His gaze upon you. He goes with you into all the spaces I do not.

Those spaces become more all the time, and it won't be long, now, until you're grown and gone. A young-man voice calls for Mom and means me, and it jars. I doubt the strength of my heart, sometimes, when I think of your leaving home. But I remind myself: since you were only four, you've been leaving home three nights a week and Saturdays.

I've been learning to let you go for almost nine years.

And they want me to say I'm sorry for the way it all worked out, but I won't, because I'm not. If they sent me back to April 1999, I would offer my body to the same husband (the wrong husband) all over again, just to become your mom: the mom of a teenager with his dad's deep patience and easy forgiveness.

You, My Son, are a gift from the Father of lights, and I'll never love another person more than I love you. I'll always be behind you, for you, with you. Lord willing, I'll go ahead of you, to wait for you, and it will be so bright there: much brighter, My Darling, than even the sun.