Dear Son,

Last week, you told me butterflies are scary.

You didn’t say it in fear. You weren’t crying. And you didn’t run into the shelter of my arms, not that I would have minded. No, you shared your observation rather matter-of-factly, the vroom and zoom of your big yellow dump truck on the back deck unbroken by your admission.

I admit I didn’t know what to say. As you motored away, oblivious to my silence, I recalculated my evolving mathematical equation of parenthood, deciding that it was now twenty-five percent distraction, thirty percent exhaustion, forty percent the range of bodily functions, and a solid five percent of not knowing what to do or to say. I’m sure the math will change over time.

The beauty of my equation is that it is 100% correct. That’s because the dirty little secret of parenthood is that no one knows what the hell they are doing. Write any formula for being a dad, and, congratulations, you’re right! That said, three years in, I’ve got some tips and tricks. I know a few of your weaknesses. I understand that a Goldfish snack is a wonderful peace offering, and I learned that you can’t take too much time ensuring a diaper is secure. I discovered that suspenders are a hassle, hats can be an iffy proposition, and washable sneakers are almost a miracle.

Still, those small victories, those insights helped little as you circled around me, honking and beeping for your dump truck, mumbling about scary butterflies. I guess I didn’t know what to say because I didn’t want to know what to say. You see, to me, it takes a spotless soul to fear the fragile beauty of a butterfly. Curved, colorful wings slowly waving on the branch — if that is what scares you, then, my son, you are of an innocence beyond my reach.

The truth is that, three years in, you’ve made me a babbling brook of cliches. I still get a lightning charge of electricity up my spine when I get to talk about you. I am certain my colleagues are tired of hearing about the “best thing to ever happen to me,” and I’m fairly sure I’ve told you how much I love you often enough to wrest all meaning from the words. And, yet, it never feels enough. The unalloyed joy casts a shadow of doubt, a feeling that it isn’t possible to do enough for this little boy that rules your heart.

I hope, one day, you have a little boy or a little girl of your own. Only then will you grasp how much your daddies love you. And, just maybe, you will hear that your child is scared of butterflies. And you’ll understand.

I grew up before the age of the cell phone, thankfully, and so my exposure to cutting-edge hand-held technology consisted of the camera and the video recorder. Because my parents would not be considered shutterbugs, I looked at those devices and reacted as most people do to things they were not raised to value: I found all the reasons not to like them. I smugly concluded that my friends’ parents, with their faces buried behind cameras and video recorders, were taking themselves out of the very moments they appeared to value so much. Why couldn’t they just experience the moment?

My son is not quite 18 months old, but I have 2,800 pictures of him on my phone. He’s been alive for approximately 540 days, so I have more than 5 pictures per day of his life. And, full disclosure here, those 2,800 pictures are the pictures that made the cut! Those special moments are catalogued by dozens of picture clicks, and subsequently curated to reflect only the finest aspects of his beauty and majesty. Hypocrisy does not begin to describe my sin. I have become what I mocked and judged, and them some. I am humbled by my weakness.

At the risk of self-serving rationalization, I, nearly 3,000 pictures and videos in, have a better understanding of what my friends’ parents were trying to accomplish as they snapped and flashed and focused. Sure, it’s a visual diary of your child’s life, it may be valued by them some day, and it can help distant family stay connected, but, ultimately, it’s the losing gambit to capture the moment and trap it in amber. The day to day mechanics of parenting — feeding, bathing, dressing, cleaning, protecting — never relent, but those chores fade to the background, dwarfed by the all-encompassing love you feel for your child. The preciousness of that bond is, in turn, threatened by the inescapable passage of time. They grow, they change, one stage begets another, equipoise always just out of reach. The shifting ground beneath your feet serves as a reminder of the fleeting nature of the arrangement. You’ll always be their mom or dad, but there are only so many Cheerios to balance on their nose, only so many rocking chair naps, only so many hugs and kisses untempered by human complexity.

You can’t stop it, can’t fight it, can’t change anything. And so you become a cliche, focusing and clicking your way on the off chance that, inside that frame, you’ll capture the essence of this love that you cannot control and cannot quite articulate. That, years later, as they pay their mortgage, you might just be able to recapture that magic. To take your head and your heart back to those moments of seemingly unfettered happiness. On my son’s first birthday, I wrote that he has given me a sort of invincibility, because I completely understand that I can never experience a greater love, a fuller contentment, and more pristine joy than my experience with him. It is physically, mentally, and emotionally impossible. But it’s a double-edged sword, for if this is the mountaintop, if this is as good as it gets, isn’t that worth savoring? Saving? Maybe even containing as much as you can inside the four corners of a photograph?

Of course you can’t trap it for posterity. If you could, it wouldn’t mean as much. But my love for my son has made me a fool in so many ways, so I’ll keep clicking. And maybe one day, in the distant glow of my golden years, I’ll have the wisdom to understand that, rather than an unsuccessful attempt to capture the essence of my love for him, my innumerable photos will stand as a compelling testament to the fact that I was blessed to have a son. And that will be enough.

Five years ago, I sat in a sanctuary, listening to an a cappella singing group from my husband’s alma mater. The songs, ranging from pop to holiday, were entertaining enough, but that night my attention was snagged by the toddler several rows in front of me. The music held little allure for the tike, but that didn’t stop him from having a good time, as he treated his dad’s body as his personal jungle gym. He had a face right off a Gerber jar, and I found my eyes repeatedly falling on the precocious little boy.

Between the songs, the group members introduced themselves, sharing their name, college major, and career goals. The singers’ goals were impressive and expected — architect, doctor, teacher — until two-thirds of the way through the group, a lanky young man introduced himself. I don’t recall his academic major, but, when he announced his career goal, he won over every member of the audience by saying it was “to be a good dad.” In that moment, as his words still bounced around my ears and my eyes again landed on the little guy a few rows up, something coalesced inside me: I wanted that. After sleeping on this personal chrysalis, I would admit it to my husband the next morning, only to discover that he, too, had been thinking the same thing during the concert.

Tonight, I tucked in my son after celebrating his first birthday. After a four year adoption wait and a first year full of joy and love and tenderness (and some sleeplessness), I was caught off guard by the tinge of sadness loitering on the periphery of my birthday revelry. I never expected to think he was growing too fast at one year old or to not be ready to let go of the baby version of my son. Seeing your child grow and thrive is the dream of every parent, and there I am, like a walking, talking cliche, bemoaning that my little boy wasn’t o-so-little anymore. If I’m feeling this at one, will I swoon in depression when he starts elementary school, require institutionalization as he begins high school, and just completely decompensate when he leaves for college? I’m not so sure I was prepared to sign up for this emotional rollercoaster.

As fraught as the future seems, I take considerable solace in those perfect moments the last twelve months afforded me. Perfectly ordinary moments that filled me with an extraordinary feeling of love that simply lay outside my capacity to anticipate before he entered my life. The first time he held my hand. The first “DaDa.” The squeals of delight as I tickle him. The smile. The coos and serene peace as he sleeps on my chest, his head gently rising and falling with my breath. The quiet as I rock him to sleep in the rocking chair. The prior four decades of my life had not earned those moments, did not deserve those moments, and, yet, through chance and luck and good fortune and all other things mystical, here I am, permanently transfixed by this wonderful little boy, my son. It’s a strange type of invincibility he has given me, for I can love nothing more, feel no more, be no more.

So, tonight, I think about that young man on that stage, dreaming of being “a good dad.” Only now, five years later, can I appreciate how that young man’s goal far outpaced the surgeon, the marine biologist, and the scientist, for it is an endeavor that gobbles up your soul, wraps your heart around the tiniest of fingers, and dares you to be better than you have ever been. I hope I get there.

My eight month old son typically falls asleep in his crib, grabbing my weary hand and pulling it to his tiny chest. Some nights he just holds my hand close; other nights, he wraps his arms and legs around my hand and tucks into the corner of his crib. And I stand there, a prisoner of his sleep ritual. I inventory the dirty dishes and unwashed laundry, and acknowledge that I have things to do beyond standing and listening to his increasingly heavy sighs and murmurs. But just as I go to extricate myself via Chinese acrobatics from his straight-jacket hold, I consider how ephemeral the moment is, how I will never again experience the intoxicating combination of need, defenselessness, and innocence, how every day I come closer to him not needing me like this. It’s inevitable, but there I remain, selfishly absorbing every detail of his face, his gently moving lips, his safari nursery, his firetruck pajamas, opening every sense I have to its fullest capacity in the futile attempt to indelibly etch the vanishing moment in my mind. I can only guess this is what love is, for I know all that will remain, one rueful day in the future, is a vague impression of this fleeting moment.

I stand in the darkness and watch my little boy sleep, and I realize I am now holding onto him.

The best moments of my life are spent with my infant son sleeping on my chest. His breath is slow but rhythmic, a continual whisper reminding me that I will never know a greater happiness. His head bobs with the rise and fall of my chest, and I steal kisses, trapping his locks between my lips. His small hands knead my chest hair unconsciously, as if to return the favor. His unspoiled goodness humbles me. His gentle lip quivers amuse me. His mere existence strips me of everything but gratitude. I close my eyes, breathe in that baby smell, wrap my arms slowly around him, nuzzling his warm, pink flesh, and, with all my senses engaged, let go of it all. He changes everything. The weight on my chest makes me float.

Last week, the heavens opened up and sheets of rain crashed about our house for hours on end. The torrent was such that the idea of the entire tri-state region beckoning the storm with an effective group rain dance could not be ruled out. So plentiful was the moisture in the air that walking along the sidewalk would have been more akin to a swim. You get the point, it was rainy.

During a relative lull in the downpour, I stood at the kitchen sink when a frog’s ribbit echoed through the kitchen so loudly that I startled myself motionless. Understanding that I was not in a bog, I ruled out frogs at my feet, but, upon closer listening, I deduced that the infringing croaks originated right outside our kitchen window. Moreover, as I crept closer to the window, honing in on the amphibious squawk, I realized that it was not a ribbit solo but, rather, a chorus of frogs outside my window. I dashed out to the front porch into the soupy night and was greeted by the rumble of thunder, the splatter of heavy rain, and an anuran ensemble. I spotted one of the singers near our bushes; compared to their powerful croaks, these toads were tiny. I couldn’t understand how such tiny bodies produced such booming, echoing croaks! I laughed at the preternatural spectacle of the moment, and, as I stood on the porch listening to the storm and to the show, I also thought back to 1983.

In 1983, or thereabouts, my family took a trip to St. Louis, Missouri. I remember precious little from the trip, but, with clarity, I recall three things: going up in the Gateway Arch, swimming in our hotel pool, and Dad becoming upset that neither my sister nor I showed much interest in the botanical gardens. His frustration aside, I suppose we weren’t unusual for seven- and four-year-olds. No matter how beautiful the blooms, most kids just aren’t going to go wild at the prospect of flowers, trees, and bushes.

My ambivalence to nature remained strong throughout my childhood. I was not opposed to being outdoors if it meant playing sports or perhaps earning some spending money by mowing a lawn or two, but I certainly didn’t feel the call of the great outdoors. Camping seemed unnecessarily uncomfortable, and gardening or planting flowers involved getting dirty. I didn’t see the appeal, yet there was Dad, working in the yard, planting flowers and bushes. I always recognized that our home had one of the prettiest yards on the block; I just couldn’t work up any interest of my own beyond appreciating the final product. Mother Nature and I were not close.

I’m slowly changing, though, and our move to a more rural exurb of the DC area has hastened that change. My early morning commutes are often greeted by a bubbling red sun as it peaks over the horizon, and the deer and fox are so plentiful as to create hazards on the roads. Woodpeckers, hawks, and groundhogs are not uncommon running partners as I stroll through my tiny new hometown, and the simple stretch of fields, farms, barns, and trees on my daily drives invite a slower contemplation of all that is not concrete, steel, and plastic.

I am not ready to quit my job, live off the land, and sew my own clothes. I won’t give away my laptop or stop enjoying my satellite radio. That said, promoting Mother Nature from background extra to recurring guest star in my daily life has been a healthy counter-weight to my workdays spent e-mailing, instant messaging, and otherwise staring at a computer screen, as well as my nights blogging, Netflixing, and texting. I can’t fight the creep of technology in our lives, and I don’t even want to. But, I am more than happy to acknowledge that, as I get a little older, the natural world becomes a much greater source of peace, happiness, and wonder for me. I’m old enough to appreciate that gardens, or even a tiny flower bed, take work; to contemplate the awesome natural forces that make canyons, waterfalls, or small frogs; and to consider my tiny existence in a galaxy and universe literally full of natural wonder.

And so I stood on my porch listening to the chorus of frogs, thinking about how things change, and counting the amazingly ordinary, natural beauty that populates our lives. And, next month, when I take my parents to my favorite botanical garden, I will, in part, consider it payback for Dad’s ill-fated visit thirty-four years ago. I promise not to complain.