These tears seem to find their own path down my cheeks
when I think about how you're just not four anymore,
how you're not the chubby-fisted toddler
whose curls would quiver as you laughed that deep belly laugh of yours.
Sure! I smile when I let my mind go back in time to a place
where children's noises filled a house big enough for all of us and more,
a house whose warmth embraced us like a bosom-y grandmother,
this house with a full nest of children and cats and a dog,
a mommy and a daddy, and brothers, a grandma, the housekeepers that came and went.
Enough hands to help and arms to hold and hearts to love.

And you were the last gift, the last dream shared.

I walked the mall today
looking for whatever it would be to sing to me its presence,
a special something that would reach it's fingers out to touch my heart
in the very same way that you have always done,
a unique something that would help me say to you
how much I delight in your being my very own
and somehow the mall and the stores
and the sameness of what was there
didn't live up to whatever it is that fills my heart so.

I watched my own mother's eyes on me
as I grumbled past displays of mediocrity seeing nothing
that would aid me in saying what I have always said and then some,
to you, who I admire and stand in such awe.
You'll probably laugh that teenage laugh of yours when you read this
until you realize that among the cards and gifts and wishes of joy
and love and happiness, there remains this one thought:
There simply isn't a gift enough to mark for you
exactly what a "forever" gift you have been to me.

jn