Happy Birthday, Sterling Blaine

On Tuesday, Liberty rode with a friend to Michigan. She’s spending five days with Blaine’s sister and her family – complete with much-loved cousins – for five days. We miss her here dreadfully. It makes me think on the years to come with children growing and leaving home with absolute dread and horror. I’m not sure how to do this next phase with grace. So… I’ll take grace and mercy for today. Just today.

Today is Sterling’s eleventh birthday. He’s getting old, I tell him. He’s pretty happy about that. While I’m sitting here mourning the future and dreading not having all my littles under one roof, he’s all excited to be bigger, older, and one more year closer to adulthood. Strange world, this is.

We got Sterling a Shopsmith, circa 1954ish. He should be able to do woodworking to his heart’s content with it. I think he was thrilled. I put in my request: to have all of my children graduate high school with all digits and limbs intact. He said he’d try.

All in all, it was a good day. We spent the afternoon at the nature center and hiked the trail there, went to the park, and had angel food cake with raspberries and ice cream. Our neighbor even stopped in for ice cream. Sterling enjoyed it, I think.

If time would slow down though, just a little, that would be great.