Hello at 3 Moons

Dear Yusuf

Me and you mum decided to write this blog so that there's something you can look at when you're old enough to read. Mum wants me to upload photos of you and to write down all the things we've been getting up to since you came into our lives. That's three months ago for the record, which means since conception (9 months in mummy's tummy) you're a year old today. Another way of looking at it is three lunar cycles since you were born. I quite like moon measurements, so happy third birthday aswell son. So mum's idea is to record all the things we get up to with you and since you've been born, and which you won't be able to remember because you're so young. It's a strange feeling, spending time with someone who's so young they don't know at all what is going on around them, someone so vulnerable and innocent and perfect and who can't do anything at all for themselves, all the while thinking that once your own parents did the same for you. And as it shall be with you, so it is with us - no memory of all the boundless grins, the cries the constant attention given. So much hard work, stress yes sometimes when we are tired, but also much more than that so much joy involved but until you have children of your own (and how much I wish for that!) you will probably not understand what I amm talking about. And there will be lots like that here in this blog, although not all of it will need you to have your own children to understand. Much of it you will get by the time you are thirteen, if not before. Mum's idea is to write about all the things you did with us but which you will never remember. And I will do that next post, I promise, starting with perhaps your birth or maybe somethings I can remember from when you were still growing in the womb. Yusuf my sweet boy who I love so much already, and yet whose personality is still almost completely unknown to me, the reason I like the idea of this blog is that it's a way of communicating with you across time, about many things, not just what happened during those amazingly obviously precious moments when you were a beautiful, such a truly beautiful little ball of magic, totally vulnerable, unclouded with human conditioning, just alive and aware, of what though you knew not. One day you may read this and feel closer to me as a result. There is a chance I will not be with you to share it with you, or that you will never see it but here it is nevertheless. Our attempt to write down for you what is happening in the time of your infancy, things we did together, but also other things that are going on in this wonderful, infuriating, absurd, beautiful and miraculous world of ours. And also, ideas. Ideas of what it means to be alive in this time, and all times. Ideas that recognise that many things are wrong about the world we live in. And then, from there ideas of what we must do to make it right. And hopefully a record of what we are already doing because I want this to be a way of introducing myself to you, and likewise your wonderful mother. So that, whatever happens we have shared with you who we are, told you the most important things that we have discovered. So that the times we were together, when you are so very young can perhaps have a double significance, the real moments we spend together with you as a 12 week old person and us as forty somethings with such busy lives, and then again the real moments you spend reading as a young man, and later a grown and experienced adult parts of what made your dad and your mum who they were. Whatever happens I hope you will enjoy this blog, that it, or better the message of love in it, will mean as much to you as you, sweet little angel mean to us.