My son is six.
He's almost finished first grade.
I worry about him sometimes.
I think about the future: politics, the planet, his personality.
I speculate.
How free, how safe, how whole will he be?
There is much I can't control...
...like what might happen on the playground or the news.
But I find peace in knowing what I can control.
It focuses me.
I know I can tell him that I love him not because of what he does but because of who he is.
He is my son.
He will always be my son.
He will never lose this love.
I can show this to him.
--
We bought some plastic stars--those cheap ones from the dollar store that sometimes glow in the dark.
I stuck them on his ceiling in the shape of a heart.
There are twenty of them.
(I counted.)
When he falls asleep, it is the last thing he sees.
He knows what it means.
It means I love him, I will always love him, and he will never lose this love.
There is so much I can't control.
But I know I can say this to him.
I know I can say it every day.
I can give these words power from the actions I take.
So that one day the words that I am speaking--that heart on the ceiling seared into his memory--will cause his own lips to move and his own voice will speak:
"I love you for who you are and not what you do, and you will never lose this love."
And his own children lying in their beds looking up at stars that glow sometimes will know that what he says is true.
And they will learn and grow and mature more freely in the security of that love.