Anders Turns Eight (And an Unglamorous Stroll through Target)

Thursday I wandered through Target with about a hundred babies in my cart, and trailing behind me, and wandering off and ignoring calls to come back. I was pushing the cart with one hand (in none too straight of lines) and dragging a full crib mattress along with the other hand. It all felt very déjà vu-ish. I’d done this same awkward maneuver before. Kids. A cart. And a baby mattress. (Only, apparently, I hadn’t learned any sort of lesson.) 

A lady in my ward saw me there. “You’re amazing,” she said. 

And perhaps she even meant it. 

But . . . when you are dragging a mattress along and veering off course and losing children left and right “you’re amazing” feels oddly similar to . . . a lot of other less complimentary things.

The mattress wasn’t actually what brought me to Target. It was Anders’ eighth birthday, and, unfortunately, it is not surprising for me to be looking for presents on actual birthdays . . . or to be crossing fingers that an Amazon package will manage to arrive before the day ends. (This day I was doing both.)

The afternoon before his birthday, as we discussed the type of ice cream and dinner Anders might want, a shocking thought suddenly occurred to him. “Wait,” he exclaimed, and, as if he didn’t quite believe it could be true but also suddenly felt certain it must, “Do I have one of those? Like one of those . . . being born stories?”

And he did! He did actually have “one of those being born stories”!

So I told him about waiting and waiting and his due date coming and going. And about watching General Conference and wishing he would come. And about the doctor getting a bit nervous about how big he was measuring. And about going in hesitantly on a Monday morning to be induced only to have Anders say, “Oh fine then,” and begin his journey here before the doctors ever started a thing. And I told him about his arrival (weighing in at nearly ten pounds). And about how we named him Anders partly because he had ancestors named Anders and partly because I’d loved the name ever since I was small (from hearing it each time my mom read our worn copy of “The Cap that Mother Made” [the copy that is now in his "special box"]). But mostly I told him about the few moments in the stillest and darkest part of the morning when I had just woken and everything felt very . . . thin — like a wall you hadn’t even known was there suddenly turning to clouded glass in front of you. I felt bustling. And unmistakable excitement. And farewells. And a cord of connection to relationships beyond memory. I told him how I tried not to move — hardly dared breathe — knowing how quickly my earth-bound senses would take back over and block that window. 

And now? He’s eight full years here! He’ll be baptized this weekend. He's excited. He's been praying his baptism "would come soon". And telling me he is more excited for that day than his birthday even. And he's been told what he's promising. And what God is promising in return. But, he's young. And he won't yet fully understand what it means -- covenanting to remember Christ and to try and act as He would in all his thoughts and actions. He won't understand the full sacredness or significance of what it will allow for him. But, God is patient, and ready to tutor him, and, like me, he will grow to understand it more fully. And eventually he will look back over his life and be amazed at the path this set him on and to see the direction and strength (given directly from God) that he was constantly given to do for others and to become for himself far beyond his own capacities could ever have allowed. As I am only beginning to understand it all more perfectly myself, I feel particularly awed that he is here -- at this tiny speck of a moment in his eternity -- that has significance beyond what our mortal minds can know.