Eighteen years ago, I made a person.

I was heavily pregnant throughout the holiday season. On New Year’s Day, we spent the day with my in-laws. I had a persistent lower backache. Sometime that night, it became evident that this had been the beginning of labor. We drove to the hospital in what was being called a “polar vortex,” and we barely made it in time. I almost delivered my son in the toilet while waiting for my husband to park the car. It was a very short labor. He was a rather small newborn. We were so happy to finally be able to see our new person.

I am very, very thankful to have been able to have children. I was on the older side when I made this person. He, and his siblings, are God’s gift and mercy to me and my husband.

Now, that person is an adult. We have had eighteen Christmasses with him (counting the one just before he was born). Reader, I need you to understand that this is a very finite number of Christmasses.

What happens now? I don’t know. I am happy with my son’s character. It is far better than my character was at eighteen. But good, newly minted and still very immature adult character does not a future make. What path will open up before him? We are trusting God.

Parenting is nothing if not fearful. When my son was an infant, my big fear was that he would die or come to some physical harm while still a baby. I assumed that, once he was a teenager, this fear would diminish. Wrongo, or only half right. I’m less hormonal now (so the emotions are less intense), and the fears have changed. Now they are things like the draft, car crashes, heartbreak.

I have friends who really only had eighteen Christmasses with their son, because he was killed at the age of eighteen. Praying for them. Eighteen Christmasses is such a small number.