My baby turns 18 today

This is a strange day - I'm both very happy, and really sad. My baby - well, my oldest baby - turns 18 years old today.

I got up early to wish him Happy Birthday and to give him his presents - all chosen by him, as my taste in clothing doesn't run to the right mix of "goth and emo" styles! (He quit letting me pick out his clothes two years ago, when my taste was officially no longer cool.)

As I've been watching him walk around the house in his new white pants, his white shirt and T-shirt and his black belts (yes two - one with spikes on it), and his black suspenders with the white grinning skull faces), I see two of him. There's a smaller, shorter, just as sweet version of himself imprinted over the man he is today.

So many memories...of me being dead tired, coming out of my office where I'd just been on the phone with a very difficult client, and him using the remainder of his mashed potatoes and chocolate gravy to have "painted" me a picture on the refrigerator...of him holding tightly to my hand as I took him to kindergarten for the first time...of him going through a stage, when he learned to undress himself, when he took one shoe off and threw it out the window while we were driving. (It ended up that he spent most of that summer going barefoot.) And then there was the time that he stripped naked in front of a neighbor's house, to play in their irrigation water...

In the 18 years that it's been my honor and privilege to be his mother, he's brought me happiness, joy and a contentment that I didn't know that I was looking for, until they laid him in my arms for the first day.

It's interesting to me that I haven't had a hard time with a birthday since I turned 25. I've enjoyed every year since then. But today, although it's certainly not a bad day, I'm having a little trouble with this one...