Seven

I'm astonished. Sam is seven. He's been seven for more than a month now. Seven years since I first met him, welcomed him with a sigh of relief that confounded Will. I look across these years and I can't remember so much of them; I am grateful for the pictures we took that captured who he was because he's so much more now, but I regret not memorizing every last moment, especially the trivial ones not worthy of a camera.

Sam is my salvation. Not on a personal level, but on a grander scale. He is, in every sense of the word, a child of September 11, 2001. He was conceived just before then, my pregnancy was clouded by those events, and that event will always be part of his culture. But my boy, my sweet child, carried me through. When I got scared or anxious about the world I was bringing him into, I promised myself that, in having a child right then, I was not only expressing my hope in the future, I was _making_ a future - one of love and family and goodness.

I remember the joy that filled me as I ran to his day care to see him, and the lightness that filled me when he lay (drooling!) in my arms. Now he challenges me and exasperates me and astonishes me, and I don't think I'm as good a parent as I could be, but I do know that my son is love and joy and heart, and I am grateful for the chance to know him.