I spent part of my birthday helping out at your kindergarten Valentine’s Day party. It was the best present I could have given myself.

Dear Evan,

From the moment you were born, you have been a delightful mystery.

You cried out when you entered this world but you settled down quickly, and you didn’t cry again the rest of the time we were in the hospital. Not when you were hungry. Not when you were being changed. Not a single tear the entire time. Your daddy and I sat in our hospital room 24 hours after your birth, waiting to be discharged and talking about you in hushed tones. Was there something wrong with our son? we wondered. How could he be this alert, yet this quiet? Everything we’d learned about newborns from your older brother included crying and fussing and general discontent. Babies cried a lot, we remembered. A lot.

And then we strapped you into that giant infant car seat and you wailed all the way home while we laughed with relief. That was my first lesson in Evan: You are not living out someone else’s history, you are making your own. And you will do it however you darn well please.

That ride feels like a hundred years ago, not six. I guess because six years includes a million moments and a thousand triumphs, hundreds of tantrums and tons of kisses and countless prayers and tears and “firsts” and “lasts.” It’s true what they say, that childhood is comprised of the longest days and the shortest years.

But this note is for you right now, the Evan that you are at 6 years old, the Evan that I love and cherish and often don’t understand in the least. I want you to know that I am utterly captivated by your mystery, by your contradictions, by your sweetness and light and tears and heart.

Both you and your brother are sensitive kids, but where he is more contemplative, you are reactive. You express the full force of your emotions moment to moment, with very little regard to what’s around you or what’s “appropriate.” When something happens – or doesn’t happen – that differs from the image or expectation you had in your mind, it is impossible for you to hide your disappointment.

You caught your very first fish this past year, and you were so proud of it.

The good news is, as quickly as you unravel, you also regroup. If something catches your eye and pulls your mind away for a second from the terrible injustice you were just lamenting, you might happily scamper off, with no remnants of distress apparent on your face. Many, many times I have been left standing, astounded, in the aftermath puddle of an indefinable meltdown after that switch has been flipped. But only you can flip it.

Though your mood can change on a dime, you actually hate change of any kind. If I move a piece of furniture, or you outgrow a shirt, or somebody tries to sit at a different seat at the dinner table, you come undone. The images and memories and expectations in your mind are so strong – so unbelievably strong – that any deviation can be devastating for you. When I wished you a happy birthday this morning, your response was classic Evan: “Just call me 5 still.”

The contradictions by which you live are powerful, all-encompassing and very often amusing. You run around all day in your underwear complaining of being hot, then ask to be tucked under four blankets at night. You dress up and play as a ninja and a Power Ranger and a mash-up of superheroes all the time, yet never want to watch a movie with any kind of good guy-bad guy conflict. For an entire year you wanted to be the same thing for Halloween (Darth Vader), and then you emphatically changed your mind three times (Wolverine! No, a lion! No, a ninja!) and I bought three costumes (and returned two) in the eight days leading up to the holiday. You proclaimed tortellini to be your favorite food and requested it for dinner, and then told me you hate tortellini and couldn’t possibly eat it as soon as it was placed in front of you. And when I put my foot down and insisted that you have 10 bites anyway, you took a bite, started to chew, ran frantically to the kitchen trash can and gagged it out, then returned to your seat, dutifully took another bite and began the whole process again. Nine more times.

You are wild and strong-willed and irreverent. You almost always wear your shirt backwards, sometimes your pants, too. All winter long you insisted on wearing your winter hat on top of your jacket’s hood. For five months you refused to get a haircut, throwing two massive fits both times we went to the salon (Because you, Mr. Contradiction, promised me you were ready to get it cut until we were inside the salon, at which point you reacted in a way that suggested getting a haircut was the same as cutting your head off), nor would you let me comb it or tame its unruliness for all of those very long, shaggy months.

This hair drove me crazy, but you were not about to back down.

You are extremely particular about textures and fabrics. You rarely match, and you never care. You won’t wear sweaters or collared shirts or jeans or anything with buttons. You don’t like to feel the seam in your socks, and they can’t be too high or too low on your tiny, muscular legs. Your shoes have to be on just tight enough but not too tight. Your mittens must go on before you leave the house, not while you’re walking out or after you’re in the car. You cannot get dressed – not even a single shoe – while you’re talking to your brother. Multitasking is not your specialty.

You are a fierce little one, brave and bold. You will stand up to kids three years older and a full head taller than you on the playground after school, particularly if you think they’re messing with your older brother. You are adventurous and outdoorsy. You love to be in the spotlight, until you don’t. You are creatively talented and incredibly imaginative. Sometimes your artistic medium is a bin of Legos, other times it’s a bin of markers, but you always create something impressive.

You are astute and playful and sweet. You loved shoveling our driveway with me after a snowstorm this winter, and you were so proud to learn how to wash the dishes. You like helping me with laundry, and you love to cook and bake.

There is nothing gluten-free about our baking.

You will do just about anything for a warm, soft pretzel, though a dark chocolate treat and a dish of ice cream are also direct routes to your heart. But there is no more direct route than through your brother. You adore Kostyn in a way I have rarely seen among siblings. You will defend him against me when I am trying to reprimand him for something he has done to you, even if it was you who pointed out the grievance in the first place. The pictures and stories you bring home from school often include the two of you doing something funny or just plain fun. I think your kindergarten teacher said it best at your parent-teacher conference when she said, “I have never had another student who loves his sibling as much as Evan loves Kostyn.”

This year of change – at school and at home – has been huge for you, and you have done so well, Evbo. Life has shifted and you have shifted with it, growing, thriving, loving us and teaching us so much along the way. You make us laugh every day. You give the best hugs. You keep me on my toes. You keep all of us on our toes.

A few weeks ago you asked me to write something new about you, “something like the other things you wrote about me and Kostyn, about funny things we said and did a long time ago.” You love it when I read the old entries on my blog, so you can hear what you were like at age 1, and 2, and 4. You have such pride and joy in who you are, and I want that for you always.

So this is you at 6, Evan. I will read it to you today, and you will read it again many times in the coming years, and you will know that you are a sweet, God-given mystery, and I am beyond lucky to spend every day of my life trying to figure you out, and delighting in the clues that you give me.

You are a puzzle I know I will never fully solve, and that may be the best Evan lesson you have taught me: To be present in the moment being experienced right now, because the very next one is simply unknowable, and the present one, if you take it for what it is – in all its raw emotion, mess, energy and surprise – is breathtaking.

Happy birthday, sweetness. I love you infinity.

Love,

Mommy

The eyes of an angel … even in those moments when you are seemingly possessed by the devil. 😉