BTB's Seventh Trip Around the Sun

To our dear son as you turn seven:

Over the weekend, you invented "Tag Ball," made your own passport with this question, "grownup or kid" and you wrote:k-I-d, and you tithed your birthday money. You make all of us around you look better, be better and want more out of life. You navigate critical adults, awkward and stony-hearted children, and your carefully-selected friends. How do you do it? It's like you are able to finely tune the world around you to play perfectly in your harmony.

I know that I am the toughest on your character because I know we are very similar, and you don't know how hard I pray that you don't get messed-with in life. That you can find your corner--get strengthened and rally back into the tough and terrible world out there. I know you know this and yet you work hard to bring hope and beauty into it anyway. Like the moon-power reflector you made tonight. It was a skinny stick that you whittled to expose the bare wood. You drew on it with soft-graphite so that it was silvery. Then you held it up under your eye. It was to reflect and catch the moonlight, you said. All out of a stick!

We are dumbstruck, flat-footed, and bowled over by you every day but know that we are your parents. We are here to keep you safe and to lead your way.