Written August 27, 2011

Five years ago today at 6:30am, my whole world was changed, when my first child, my baby girl Claire Elizabeth Hemati, was born. I consider it an honor to be her mother and help her to grow into all that God made her to be.

In case you didn’t know, Claire is very special.

She only wears dresses (she has to wear pants and shorts as punishment), but she climbs trees barefoot and builds forts.

She loves dragons and knights and princesses and fairy tales and all things magnanimous and grandiose. She went through a phase when she was only interested in the evil characters in fairy tales, I believe at the same time she was confronting her own sin, and over the course of several months she began to change the stories so that in the end, these evil characters learned about goodness, repented of their evil, and were forgiven and allowed a second chance. She gave herself a second chance too.

Before she was two she could sing all the verses of “Come Thou Fount”.

She’s been using words like “antipathy,” “asinine,” and “reticent” since she was three years old in everyday sentences.

She hates to perform in front of people, but somehow is transported into a serious but lofty state of pure joy when she gets the chance to dress up and dance around the living room to Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite in front of strangers.

She refuses to say goodbye, but once someone she loves leaves her home, she often runs down the street after their car and watches until they are out of sight.

She is stronger in will and spirit than I think I will ever be. She refuses to become something just because others want her to.

She loves her little sister, and takes pride in entertaining Annalise while mommy gets a midday nap. She also is sorely jealous of Annalise’s middle name, Catherine, and often asks me if the two of them can switch, because “Annalise doesn’t care, and she’ll never know that her middle name got changed to Elizabeth”.

As all of her babysitters know all too well, she is an expert bargainer.

Her favorite food is “fairy bread” (toast with butter and sprinkles).

Her favorite band is Bright Eyes (and mine too). She listened to their whole newest album with me, both of us laying on our backs on the floor in the living room, feeling all of the nuances of the music pulse inside of us. Her favorite songs by them are “At the Bottom of Everything” (aka “the airplane song”) and “True Blue”.

It is extremely tough to earn her love and trust, but once you do, she is yours forever.

In her I see a promise from God that goodness and love truly do exist.

There is an anonymous poem I discovered around the time she was born that hints at the mysterious, magical gift that she is to me. Here it is:

Life is precious.
We hear it so often.
It becomes a litany without meaning,
Until the moment when
Life explodes upon you.

Pain and ecstasy at once
Place within your arms
That perfect,
Precous entity.

The absolute realization of an idea,
That words keep in the shadow
Of our consciousness,
A kind of universe,
The smiling face of God.

Good beyond measure,
This tiny individual –
This proof of hope and truth,
And all things beautiful.

The wonder of creation that is…
My child.

Claire, you are loved ever so deeply by your mother, and even more by your Father in heaven. May I be all to you that you have already been to me. Happy birthday sweetheart!