Although now a young man —
Still my baby, my boy.
You hold a third of my heart,
And will always be …
… my JOY
Ethan is our firstborn. Everything was exciting and new. We were so young, newly married and incredibly stupid. Maybe naive is a better word than stupid, but both still apply. All those firsts … first flutter, first craving, first baby clothes and crib. There was never an inkling of a thought that anything could go wrong. Ignorance is bliss. My favorite book “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” kept us up laughing in bed at night. I just couldn’t wait to be a mom and hold MY baby. Picking names for a boy and a girl because we decided to be surprised. Elizabeth Lynn for a girl, middle names of both me and my sister. Ethan for a boy, but we were so undecided on a middle name. I wanted the middle name to be Jason after his dad, but he kept saying it was too sing-song and rhymy (Ha!). Painting the apartment nursery yellow and green with a Winnie the Pooh chair rail border. All the tiny white baby hangers with all the outfits hanging and organized by size (Newborn, 0-3 month, 6-9 months, etc). All the baby paraphernalia. That tiny second floor space became the catalog picture for the infant department of Target. We were so crazy excited.
But nothing could have prepared me for the for 12:29p on September 3, 1999.
With that final push, Jason looked and smiled with so much pride, calm but elated, “It’s a boy!” And in that moment, he confirmed his name would be Ethan Jason. The pride was all over his being wanting that bundle of JOY to have his name. He cut the cord and they let me hold him for those first moments. Laughter through tears … I’M A MOM!!
One of the things I recall the most about that day is how I felt about Jason. I know I loved Jason before, when I married him. But it was as if I fell in love with him in that delivery room watching him fall in love with our baby boy. My relatively non-emotional man was a 180 pound ball of emotion personified. I gazed in awe as that new dad glowed with JOY. And I thought I was the luckiest girl in the world with these two amazing men in my life. No one could be more blessed than me.
In the next days, weeks and months to come, I found myself exhausted and anxious and adjusting to this new life with a baby. The sleep deprivation, the spit up on everything I ever wore, the diaper changing, the nighttime feeding, my changed, “mom” body … all the things that bring the euphoria of that delivery room moment to an abrupt reality. But in quiet moments in a gliding rocker or bathing my cooing child or singing to my sleeping baby or giggling at his giggles of discovery, the JOY of those first moments returned. And they keep returning, to this day, nearly 20 years later.
And I truly don’t remember when I started calling him MY JOY. But it was really early in his life. And it stuck, because it was true.
Ethan Jason was and is and always will be . . .
MY JOY.
Just Amy 