Dear Son,

Mother’s Day is approaching once again, and I want to take this opportunity to ask for something from you.  I don’t want flowers.  I don’t need a card.  A day at the spa, a pedicure, breakfast in bed – those aren’t me.  Even at just two years old, I think you are wise enough to know that those things just aren’t your mommy.

I want something from you that’s much bigger.  Much greater.  Much more important.

But don’t worry – you’ve got time to work on it.

I want you to promise me that, as you grow up, above all else you are going to do everything you can to just be you.

When you get into middle school and high school, you’re going to have a lot of different people influencing you.  I’m not talking about your peers – I’m actually not so worried about the gangs, the drugs, the bullies.  We’ll work through those together.  You have a great head on your little shoulders.  I’m worried about the far more subtle influences – the ones that seem harmless but that can take you on a long, long journey far from yourself.  People who will tell you what you should do, even when what you should do falls far from who you are.

A lot of people are going to say you should go to college.  You should get a degree in a subject that will ensure a good job.  You should drive a sensible car.  You should look forward to working up the career ladder, to putting in long hours at the office, to earning two weeks of vacation per year, to 9-5 spent in a cubicle with 30 minutes for lunch and a good pension plan.  You should meet a nice girl and settle down.

Those are great plans, if that’s what your heart is telling you to do.  But what if your heart compels you to paint?  To sculpt?  To sing?  Those are far less certain paths than, say, software engineering.  What if you fall in love with farming?  What if you’d rather do hard work with your hands and your back?  What if you want to delay college in order to spend a season through-hiking the Appalachian Trail?  What if your twenty-fifth birthday rolls around and you still don’t have all the answers?

By the time you have to face these questions, you’ll be well on your way to being a good, good man.  You won’t need me to tell you what to do – at some point, that’s no longer included in mommy’s job description.  But I hope, I truly, truly hope, that along the way I’ll have given you the tools to be confident enough to know that, even if the world says you should be doing one thing, that your heart gets a say in the matter, too.  And I’m confident you’ll make the right decision for you.

What I’m saying is that I want you to promise me that you’ll define your own happiness so you can find your own happiness.

I love you so much.

xxooxxoo