My dear Naím,

I began drafting this post on the eve of your fourth birthday. Since then, my sole attempts to continue writing were intermittent and sporadic, slightly chaotic, similar to the routine I live, we live in. Because this is, to some extent, what your mum’s life is about: organised yet confined within the unpredictable routine of our day-to-day, trying not to spin out and hardly managing to do it all and, most important, getting there on time. Almost three months have passed since you became the adorable 4-year-old-boy you are now, but I still wanted to use this space to wish you a happy, and uncharacteristically belated birthday, no matter how bad the timing could seem now.

It is often said that when we feel something with an overwhelming intensity, it is most difficult to find the right words to define and convey that sentiment, for it is so strong that we can do anything but feeling it, and get carried away by its intensity. I will use an analogy we are both famliar with: do you remember the hare in “Guess how much I love you” story? When we feel so much love towards someone it is often very difficult to say how much we actually love them. It is inmesurable or, as you so rightly say “long as the numbers, which never end”.

That’s why I wanted to save – yet another-  brithday greeting here. Because, no matter how many times I tell you that I love you to the moon and back 10 million times; in reality, I will never be able to coin a statement to sum up each and every one of the feelings you elicit in me and every blessing I counted since you arrived. The love I feel for you trascends any eloquent sentence or paragraph… It really is immense. Can you see now how the hare in the story is right? Do you see now how difficult it can be to tell someone how much we love them?

Seeing you grow up day by day is more than a gift to me; seeing and admiring the bright, sensitive, compassionate and generous little human you already are. It is not always easy, I can tell you. Life is not easy and nor is the world we live in. I know I might not make things any easier sometimes and for that I am sorry. I am sorry for those times I told you that I could not play with you anymore because I had to make dinner, for the times I sounded awkward and unconvincing when I explained to you why mums  had to – or wanted to – work; for the times I did not sound reassuring when I explained why I was not with you when you were away with your dad. No, it is not easy for me, nor is it for the mums who don’t have dads around.

Now I will tell you something else. Please pay close attention to what I am about to write: even if your mum burns dinner sometimes, and is unable to make envy-inducing home-made costumes, she is completely certain of something: that no matter what, she would have chosen to be your mum this time, and ten million times over.

So, your tearful mum makes a toast with a cup of -green- tea as big as her heart, but easier to empty…  And she may say yet again:  “happy birthday, my love. I am forever grateful for everything you teach me and for choosing me as your mum”.