An Open Letter

Dear 2012,

Please. Tell me you're an easy, breezy kind of year. Filled with pleasant surprises and small, everyday delights. Less boat rocking announcements. Fewer punch-in-the-gut, frozen in time moments where the future shifts in front of my eyes. More signed deals and checks in the bank. More grass in my toes, more warm sun in my hair. More good news headlines. More trending upward.

Please reserve the afternoons for a few more naps like this with Jonesy. The crawling and the running will come quickly this year. We can wait.

More Saturdays like this, please. I love it when their hair gets long and sunny yellow. I love watching their swim lessons. Make it a good summer: the year when my legs get tan again. Let this be the year that I find a new favorite pair of jeans and perfect summer sandals.

There will be more wrinkles and freckles this year: I don't mind. They have been well earned.  But could we have a little less camping? A little less Bieber and a little more Passion Pit? A little less Jell-O and a little more creme brulee?

Whatever else happens. Please. Watch this one closely. The time for scraped knees and broken toys has passed and he's due for his first real tragedies. The grown up kind, like broken hearts and the first inkling that life will hold disappointments that cannot be repaid. We can't stop the clock or slow the tide. But please, ease him through 14 this year.

I guess I should just be grateful to have another year, 2012. But I'm really hoping for more than that from you. Please be the year where I make more, build more. And worry less. Please be the year that we see that the lessons we've learned have been for a reason. A purpose beyond grinding through the middle years. Bless the lessons to grow roots and bloom. Be a year for blossoming.

With love,

Rachel