Happy Birthday, Fifi!

11 years ago this night, two days away from your due date, your Daddy came home on a Friday evening and plopped onto the couch with a low mumble, "Oh, I'm so tired. Please don't go into labor tonight."

Fifteen minutes later I felt a new sensation. You were coming -- ready or not.

We didn't actually leave for the hospital for another six hours, and during that time your Daddy scurried to pack up our boom box (before the tiny MP3) and several of my favorite cds. I had to laugh when I caught him trying to finish his Partners in Birth book -- he wasn't more than 1/2 way through. Tooooooo late!

It was so exciting! I went the very conventional route with hospital and epidural, nurses and doctors and monitors. Unbeknownst to me at the time, OBs and anethesiologists seem to conspire to secretly relax the laboring mother -- especially if it's a first delivery. My epidural, like most others, was chock full of unnecessary narcotics that made me feel a little "loopy," and rendered me woefully ineffective in my effort to help you down the birth canal. In the end, my doctor retrieved you with a very large salad tonge-looking instrument called a forcepts. You came out purple, and had to be revived. You were 9 lbs., 9 oz. and had the sweetest cry I'd ever heard -- so demure, so quiet -- all girl.

I don't know what I expected you to look like, but I didn't expect you to look so completely unlike me! I hadn't given it much thought that your daddy's dark skin, eyes and hair would prove dominant in the gene pool, and here you were: dark, swollen, and somewhat smooshed from the trama of delivery. Do you want to know my first thought when they put you in my arms? Really? I thought to myself, "Oh! Oh. Well...I don't care what she looks like, I'm going to love this baby anyway." I thought you looked like an Eskimo (which would be fine if you were an Eskimo), while Daddy likened you to an angry little Buddah.

I remember when they discharged us, we thought, "They're just going to let us take her away? We don't have to fill out an application, or take a class or get a license or anything?" Driving you home was painfully slow. Everything we did in those early weeks was done with excrutiating care. You were a glass doll, after all.

You have always been very intuitive. It's no exaggeration to say that when you were an infant in the crib, you would awaken within minutes of me if I thought about you too loudly from my bed. We didn't always have a good time with the sleep deprivation, but thankfully you don't remember any of that.

You know that in your first years, your daddy and I did not know the Lord. We did our worldly, psychological best with you then, and frankly the fruits were sour; there was a spirit of anger and rage that I was passing on to you. I still struggle with it occassionally, but can see that by His mercy, you have been delivered and your sisters have been spared.

I am so thankful for you. Through you, He stripped the blinders from my eyes to be able to acknowledge His existence! I had been taught not to see Him in the trees or the mountains, the stars or any other part of His creation. It wasn't until I realized that my love for you was bigger than myself -- flowing from Someone greater, and painfully too much to contain, that I came to know the Lord.

So tomorrow at exactly 1:12 Texas time, you are 11 years old. Your father and I are blessed by all of our children, but today is a time to talk about you: our first born, our "guinea pig," our munchkin, the sister-mentor, our helper, our "loovley dauhtuh," the one to whom so much is given and the one of whom so much is expected.

My favorite memories of you are many; let me name a few through the years. When you were an infant, you would chase us around the house, slapping a little book in your hand as you crawled on the hardwood floors. We read to you a lot. From those years, Daddy especially likes the memory of you insisting that strangers in the store respond to you when you greeted them with the only word you knew, "Hi!"

As a small girl, you desperately wanted to play the violin like your cousins, and spent 2 years pretending with your play mop on your shoulder, and play broom as your bow. At 5 1/2 we began lessons, and by about 8 years old, I was humbled to watch you move past me and into areas in which I could not keep up. I used to examine your hands while you slept, struck by the fact that those little fingers could do something so wonderful that I hadn't taught you to do and that I hadn't mastered myself. The whole family is blessed by the hard work, skill and perseverence that you have exercised in your music.

When it was time to read, you worked hard but found it trying. I didn't let you hit that wall, but rather pushed you over it -- and what joy you found on the other side. We were fairly young in our walk, and were moved by your desire to read the bible in turn, during evening devotions. I have always said that God honored our efforts to teach you to read because our motivation was to see you open His Word. Your love for reading has sparked an interest in us all for children's literature and your favorite subject, history.

You are a wonderful student, interested in learning new things, and eager to share your experience with others. You own your education, and I don't see that much of it has been wasted on forgetting. You inspire me!

If I wasn't so grateful to be your mother, I might find myself envious of your friends. What a friend you are to those who have chosen to get to know you! You are kind and compassionate, introspective and humble, fun and imaginative. Your intelligent humor and fierce loyalty make you a treasure to us all. I never knew anyone like you when I was 10...oh, sorry -- 11.

I am especially thankful for the way you've handled your God-ordained privileges and responsiblities as the oldest daughter. You know your sisters love you like crazy and look up to you in everything. Your attentiveness to their stories and reports validates them; your time to initiate an afternoon of dramatic play is a delight to them both -- and to me. Do you know that sometimes I stop down my work and cry for joy as I watch you three play together from the kitchen window? I thank the Lord because He has made you a better big sister than me, and my cup overflows.

I enjoy the rest I feel knowing that you are walking in Truth, with and without your parents' tutelage.

I enjoy the way you read a good book twice.

I enjoy recognizing the way you bloom into your abilities apart from me.

I enjoy the volumes and volumes of long hoop-skirted women with fancy hair and accessories you've drawn over the years.

I enjoy watching your fascination with costumes becoming a part of something bigger. Someday, you'll sew those dresses and make that movie!

I enjoy remembering my own childhood when I see you making plans -- big plans!

I enjoy the way you sing wherever you go, as if no one and everyone is listening.

I enjoy your distinctive giggle, and that you're a good sport when we tease you about your tiny "mouse" ears.

I enjoy your thoughtfulness in helping me before I can think to ask, and your capable hands in service to the family that values you so highly.

In you, I believe God helped me see that life is eternal.

I enjoy you.

I love you.

I can't wait to see who you grow up to be; I know you will be wonderful.

Happy birthday, Fifi!

And the next year, she turned twelve!