Won't You Let Me Go Down in My Dreams

I can't sleep, and for once I don't care.

I'm not sure how to ever eloquently say this, I guess there will never be the words that make the most sense and say what I need to-- but that's not going to stop me from trying.

I can never say enough how important my mother is to me, and I never will get enough of that. As I get older my appreciation for her seems to grow infinitely more, which for those of you who know the relationship I have with my mom, it seems impossible to find more respect for that amazing woman.

I am very much a momma's boy-- I'm not ashamed of that because if anything my mother taught me it was that I am much more independent than I have ever given myself credit for.

I rarely want to call myself a man, it feels weird, but for this realization alone I'll throw aside my cringing.

I am a better man because of my mother, she raised me to be everything I am today-- without her Pax as he stands today would not exist.

My 20th birthday is on Sunday and everyone is making it wrongly about me, it's not about me-- that day was never about me.

My birth was unconventional at best, and I wonder now how my mother coped as well as she did, 27 and a mother for the first time dealing with things that most parents should never have to deal with-- ironically probably lying sleepless in much the same manner, just 20 years in the past.

I was born almost exactly 2 months premature, which means that I live now with a whole host of problems that make every day a struggle, but my mom never gave up to give me a better life-- never gave up wanting me to seem like every normal kid.

Now I don't know about you, but I think she did a pretty damn good job at putting the puzzle pieces together again and she does it all thanklessly.

The only thing she ever complains about now is that the only thing to watch on TV was the Tiananmen Square massacres and how no matter how many channels she cycled through she was stuck with the same thing. It seems ominous to watch tanks rumble towards the Forbidden City while waiting for your son to be born, it sounds like a good metaphor-- but doesn't seem to favor me much.


Everyone is so busy celebrating me, no one takes time to slow down and think about my mom who was expecting her first son to be born in August. I never quite made it, I guess being a Leo never suited me.

On Sunday the tradition will repeat, my mom will wake me up with presents and usher me down to the table, hovering like the momma bear she is as she waits for the reactions to my gifts. This day won't be about her, most people will forget her role in it at all.

She won't know that while I'm blowing out my candles, and failing to do so-- I'll be thinking of all those things I failed miserably at, and yet she still supported. All those swimming lessons where I was just too ADD to learn, all the baseball games where I got hit by the ball more than actually hitting it back, and even the driver's education class I begged to be in-- 4 years later she is still driving me around due to what she would call my "not so epic win", she can't bring herself to ever call me an epic fail.

She won't know that while she's watching me unwrap my gifts I'll be too busy thinking about how while we didn't always have everything, she somehow managed to make us feel like we were lacking nothing.

While she's watching my dad hopeless hack up my birthday cake, she doesn't know that I'm thinking of every time she played the "good mom card" and suffered through all my food experiments while I was learning to cook-- including the undercooked pizza, the solid cake (I'm still not sure how it was that solid), or the grease fire I started in our toaster which she just brushed off with ease only a mom can muster.

There's a joke she used to tell me when life would be unfair that went something like "you can be three things in this life: rich, handsome, and intelligent-- and God made you handsome and intelligent, it's a shame"-- even though I know she's lying, she never took into account the fourth thing I am...

Lucky.

So while everyone else is wishing me a Happy Birthday for effortlessly surviving another year, I'll be thinking yet again of another way to thank her-- and maybe, just maybe the next 365 days will help me come to a better conclusion.