golden every day

6:10, November 26th, 1995--Will made his way into this world after much delay. My first born. My great Comforter. A procrastinator from the very beginning--and a life began. Two lives really-his as a child, and mine as a mother.

It would be ill-fitting to approach this post with overblown effervescence. Will is a quiet soul. One who walks this world thoughtfully. Oh, he's hilarious--but you wouldn't know it unless you listened. Like that old Stand By Me scene where the kid puts his hand on the tracks to see, to feel if the train was coming. That's Will--to know him, you have to be near him. You have to listen--to pay attention. He is so worthy of study.

He has been my sounding board as he has gotten older. He is my son, but he is also my friend--and I think that is one of my favorite things about time. How it takes and how it gives. No, he doesn't need me to help him figure out life anymore--the work of that is done. Time has taken my child and made him my friend.

He carries such wisdom dovetailed with such an appreciation of the ridiculous that a conversation with him can be either amazingly insightful or hilariously absurd--most of the time it is both.

He is such an understudy of life that I am constantly amazed by his quiet, but unflinching grasp of it.  He, who in his on words, had "spent much of my childhood a nervous wreck" has met adulthood man-to-man, square in the eye.

Simply, I am amazed by him, and he will not care for this post, as humble as he is. But 34 hours of labor says I can do it anyway😊.

Happy golden birthday, Will Mudd, I would give you the world, if I could, and everything in it. I love you.

~originally published November 26, 2021