SON

You are small, but you contain worlds.

You are helpless, yet you shine with the power of life itself. You cannot contain your own power.

When we are together, there is nothing else. You are present, rooted.

You remind me of the miracle of being here.

You reach out. You are testing, exploring, carrying out brilliant experiments. You play in a world of desire and thwarted desire, pleasure and pain, sleep and wakefulness. You find your place in between. You take everything in.

You will know sorrow soon enough, perhaps even despair. Great suffering may befall you, yet also great potential for awakening. You may question everything you once believed to be true. Your path may become unclear. You may stumble in the darkness.

I may not be around to help, or give answers. That’s okay. You will find your own way, learn to trust your own stumbling. Or maybe your questions will fall into silence, and you will remember the wonder of these days, the ones we spent together before time mattered at all.

You are the illumination, little one, the hope and the possibility. All the darkness in this world seems so insignificant compared to the light and wonder in your big eyes.

I cannot tell if you are old or young. Perhaps the world has it all backwards. Perhaps you have lived a thousand years or more. Perhaps this is your final incarnation. Perhaps you have fathered me, so that I may find myself here, next to you, broken but whole, humbled, brought to my knees in gratitude. I do not know.

It does not matter. I will assume you are ancient, and worthy of the greatest love.

And you will remind me of the days when there was strength in being vulnerable, and joy was always near.

– Jeff Foster