For Lewis on your 17th birthday

Lewis,

I’ve been sat staring at an empty screen for the last hour trying to find a way to put into words everything I want to share with you this year and yet I’m struggling to see past my tears. I can just imagine you reading this, rolling your eyes at me getting all emotional, laughing at the ridiculousness of me sitting here in my Oodie scrolling through your baby photos, breaking my heart at how fast you have grown. Today you are seventeen and as much as it feels as though the years have flown, I can’t quite remember a life without you in it.

Becoming a Mummy at twenty three felt like the most natural thing in all the world at the time although looking back we were still so very young, just six years older than you are now. I can still remember the day that we took you home from the hospital and how the overwhelming happiness that you were ours was soon followed by complete and utter terror at the responsibility of raising you. I had so many hopes and dreams for you back then Lewis, I wanted to give you the perfect family, the perfect home, the perfect upbringing, and for such a long time I felt I had failed you when life didn’t quite work out the way we had planned.

And yet sitting here now, listening to you play Mario Kart in the next room with Harry, the girls no doubt tormenting you as they always do, the four of you squished together on the couch laughing at Harry as he gets completely carried away, I know that everything worked out the way it was supposed to. And just know that, other than a fourteen year old Joseph taunting you about taking the lead as Luigi, there isn’t a single thing about our lives together I would change.

In so many ways this could have been your toughest year yet, an entire twelve months of lockdown, of disappointment, of being isolated from your closest family and your friends. As much as I have felt sad for all of us having to live through a pandemic, it is you I have felt for the strongest, you who has missed out on so much more than the rest of us combined. Not only did you miss out on the excitement of leaving school, your prom, your Summer of wild parties and friendships, but what should have been such an exciting new time in your life as you started college was replaced with small bubbles, rules and restrictions, another lockdown before you’d even finished your first term.

And yet I can honestly say that you’ve taken it all within your stride, you’ve made the most of every moment when you could, done amazingly well at college – snaring pupil of the month just this week – and secured an apprenticeship for September with the promise of a fantastic career ahead. As much as growing up in a pandemic was not what I would have chosen for you given the choice, the lessons you have learned over the last twelve months will be invaluable as you continue through life. I’m hopeful that the last year has taught you the importance of your family first and foremost, strengthened your bonds between your siblings, reminded you never to take anything for granted and, when the world opens back up as indeed it will, to go out there and live your life to the very fullest.

I hope when you look back on your seventeenth year you won’t remember the weeks you spent in your bedroom or the disappointment of missing out on the things you love to do but instead the days at home as a family, when I’d convince you to watch TV with me or drag you out for a walk with Oscar. I hope you’ll remember that sense of freedom when you’d spend the whole day at the park just playing football, chatting with friends and basking in the sun, or the nights spent sitting around a campfire at “the spot” and how I’d sniff you the whole way home and you’d roll your eyes and say, “Mum, it’s smoke from the fire….”.  I hope you’ll remember it as the year you got your first serious girlfriend and how Harry would pat her head and tell her “Good doggy”, and how it meant the word to me when you’d ask my advice, tell me about your dates or simply allow me to give you a big hug without having to let go right away.

I hope you’ll remember our holiday to Crete and how stepping off that plane for the first time after lockdown was the best feeling in all the world, how we lay by the pool for seven days straight and drank sneaky cocktails after dark. I hope you’ll remember skimming stones with Harry at sunset, floating around on the inflatables with Eva and Megs, how Harry would pour you five glasses of diet coke at every meal time and tell you that tomorrow he would have one too, but never did. I hope you’ll remember the hilarity of Gaz and I singing “Mysterious Girl” every time you went in the sea and how, although the joke was completely lost on you, you humoured our silliness with your signature eye roll.

I hope you’ll remember the excitement of getting your GCSE results and how you’d rang me and read out each grade out with such pride, and a little surprise. I hope you’ll remember how very proud Gaz and I were of you, how I had cried at the poolside from Italy and then laughed in the same breath when you told me you were off out to get drunk in a field. I hope you’ll remember a year when honesty was everything, when I trusted you implicitly but knew exactly what it was like to be sixteen myself.

I hope you’ll remember the days you could visit your Grandparents in the garden, how Nanna would still insist on trying to feed you up and how delighted you were to discover you were finally taller than Grandad. I hope you’ll remember the moments with your Great-Grandma, how much we had laughed at her “Welcome to Hell” sign as we stood chatting on her driveway, how she’d ask “Are you still courting?” or say something completely crazy and you’d just play along. I hope you’ll remember how, although you share the most incredible bond with each of your siblings, at sixteen years old you were Harrys absolute hero and seeing the two of you together always did, and always will, heal my heart.

I hope you’ll remember all of those moments, all of those milestones, all of those lessons and the ordinary moments in between. And me? The thing I will remember the most from your seventeenth year is just the biggest, most overwhelming sense of pride at every step, on every day, no matter what, for always. And as much as I will always be emotional about how fast the years have flown by, and as much as I miss that Power Range obsessed six year old who made me the centre of his whole world, I love everything about the young man you have become today. You are handsome, kind, funny, clever, and the best big brother the world has ever known, and I will never stop counting my lucky stars that you are mine.

So as I wave you off on your first driving lesson this morning, no doubt a tear in my eye at meeting yet another milestone (and the start of a whole new phase of worry I’m sure), just know that I hope seventeen is everything you hope it to be, and everything you deserve it to be. Be sure to make the most of the last year of your childhood Lew, because this time next year I’ll be sat here having the mother of all melt downs that my baby boy, my first born child, is no longer a child at all.

Happy 17th Birthday Lewis,

I love you all the stars in the sky.

Mum

xxxxxxx