To my sons.....

My child is my love, my life, and my world.

I look into his eyes and I see the future of my heart, the wealth of knowledge he will collect, the people he will know and love and create.

When I hold him close, I can breathe in the scent of his tomorrow intermingled in the soft sweetness of his today....

Please, please, let that tomorrow come.

When I lose my patience, when I struggle to find the right way to talk to my ever-growing, ever-learning son, remind me that this is his today and there may be no tomorrow. Remind me to take that extra minute to sit on the floor and crash towers with him. Remind me that the laundry is not nearly as important as the curve of his face in the moonlight.

Please, Please, let there be a tomorrow.

When I am tired from a long day of work and the last thing I want to do is watch the same episode of the same television show again and again, remind me that the day will hopefully come when he will disappear to his room after school. Remind me that my time as his hero is oh-so-limited. Remind me that the words I say and the eyes I secretly roll may be the last words and the last actions I can remember having with him.

Please, Please, let there be many more days to come.

At the end of the day, when he looks up at me with those big blue eyes and asks me to lay down with him for just one more minute, Let me lay down my burden and my wants and cares and snuggle that child. Because I do not know what the next day brings, I do not know what will come… I do not know how I would long for those moments were they ever stripped away.

Please, let him grow and learn and smile.

Let him become the man he is to become. Let him have years of life, stretching out beyond the horizon, beyond my imagination, beyond what I could ever even hope for him. Let his life be a tapestry of faces and places that he meets and knows and loves. Let him face his last days with the age and wisdom of a very, very, very old man.

And above all else… let me go first.

Because I can not imagine a world without his face, because that is the “natural” order, because although I do not like the thought of his suffering at the loss of me, I can not bear the thought of the loss of him.

Keep him safe. Keep him here.

Give me, always, one more day to hug my child.