My little guy turns NINETEEN today. How the heck did that happen? Why, just yesterday (wasn't it yesterday?) my water broke around 1AM on a Sunday morning. Within an hour we were driving from CT to NYC, the Pulp Fiction soundtrack blasting. One of the sometimes amusing and sometimes infuriating things about Lucas' dad was his coffee addiction. He could.not.function.without.coffee. So, for the last month of my pregnancy we had to make a pot every night before bed just in case, because if he didn't have time to make and drink coffee he wouldn't have been able to drive me to the hospital. Or, he would have fallen asleep at the wheel. (This coffee thing was chronicled in this post.) So, while I paced around the house contracting and cursing, he drank his coffee. We woke 9 year old Emma, put her in the car and off we went. Instead of yelling "son of a bitch" with each contraction along the way, I sang "Son of a Preacher Man". It worked just as well.
Lucas was born only 3 hours later. (Don't let anyone tell you that a short labor is better. I did it without drugs, as I had done 10 years earlier for Emma, but it wasn't easy.) Emma was present for all but the final few [intense] minutes, and she even gave him his first bath, right there in the birthing room.
He was a really amazing kid from the start. He walked at 9 months, spoke clearly by 18 months, in full sentances. It was almost creepy, because he never talked 'baby-talk'. No mother-translations were necessary. He imitated people. He told jokes. He learned to use the computer, working the mouse independently, before he turned 2 years old. He read the first Harry Potter book when he was 4. But along with his staggering intelligence came a tortured sensitivity, not terribly different from his dad's. He once told me that he was a "70-year old man in an 8-year old body". Then he lost his father, which gave him more to deal with than any 8 year old should have.
Quirky and interesting, empathetic to the pain and suffering of others (Katrina victims and citizens of Haiti have been on the receiving end of his generosity). Maybe experiencing his own devastating loss has created an understanding that most kids don't have. Still, he has remained a funny and entertaining kid to be around.
Someday, I hope he'll feel like an 8-year old boy in a 70-year old body. In the meantime, he's got a few adventures ahead of him.
And did I mention that it's Elvis' birthday, too?
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