… But when the number 18 is attached to a birthday, it is no longer insignificant.  It is monumental. I have spent some time thinking about the number 18, especially today on Amelia’s 18th birthday. So I began to list a few of the things that have crossed my mind today:

Amelia is 18 today.

• 18 minutes felt like a lifetime on the night we brought you home from the hospital.
• 18 hours of sleep we got that first month.
• 18 attempts it took you to ride without training wheels.
• 18 weeks to tie your shoes…without Grammee doing it for you.
• 18 ‘hold your nose’ jumps off the diving board before you mastered it.
• 18 basketball games a year and,
• 18 nights spent in some of the seediest hotel rooms traveling for AAU basketball.
• 18  sports related trips to the ER with a torn spleen, broken ankle AND pelvis as well as a few fingers and toes; and let’s not forget the earing that mysteriously got sucked into your earlobe and had to be surgically removed.
• 18-hundred loads of laundry. (remember to separate the colors when you are in school!)
• 18 jars of peanut butter a year.
• 18 times I hit the imaginary brake in the car the first 18 times you drove.
• 18 prayers in an afternoon the first time you drove to Saratoga to work with NBC/ESPN.
• 18 years I have had to know you and love you and now I have to let you go.
• 18 dates? No way!
• 18 kisses?  Ditto…. Dad can’t handle that thought.
• $18.20 that I spent TWICE today for balloons for the mailbox.  The first set should have made 18 kids happy as they pointed up to them floating in the Niskayuna sky this afternoon.
• 18 seconds of laughing out loud at myself and knowing that you would have laughed like crazy if you saw them fly away.
• 18 hours straight- that’s how long I will cry when you leave for college next month.
• 18 minutes I will give you to answer my texts or I will be in Rochester in 18 minutes!
• 18 years is not enough to tell someone you love them, you’re proud of them and you believe in them.

18 is not insignificant. It is a springboard number to 21, 25, 30, 40 and so on with each milestone adding to who you are becoming as a person.  Happy Birthday Amelia.  You are one in 18 million and you have been mine alone up until now.

Got get ’em Meals.

Mom