Celebrating

On four sons coming home, and everything that had to happen to get here

Tomorrow is Bean’s birthday.

That’s what we called the baby I lost at four months, after seven years of being told I’d never have children at all. Every year, that date arrives whether I’m ready for it or not. And every year, it sits inside me alongside something I never expected to also be true: I have four sons.

Two of them I carried. One I took guardianship of in high school, and he has been mine in every way that matters ever since. And one is my youngest’s best friend from California, the kind of friendship built on years of the same soccer team, the same house, the same noise and chaos of boyhood. He calls me momma. His mom was generous enough to share him with me, and somewhere along the way I just became one of his.

He visited last summer for a few weeks before he left for the Coast Guard. And now he’s coming back, this time to help celebrate my youngest’s graduation.

All four of my boys, under one roof again.

They’re coming from multiple states. One of my closest friends is driving in from several hours away too. Nobody had to do this. They’re choosing to, because my youngest worked hard to get to where he is, and they want to be there for it. We all worked hard to get here, in our own ways. We’re happy, healthy, thriving, and that’s not something I say lightly either.

It means so much to me that they want to be here. Not just for the graduation itself, but for each other. To laugh. To make more memories. To be witnessed, all of us, in this moment.

And they aren’t the only ones who call me mom. Over the years there have been other kids too, kids I walked out onto the football field for senior night, kids I took for their driver’s license tests. My home was always full. That’s its own story, one I’ll tell another time. But it’s part of why this week feels the way it does. Somewhere along the way, “mom” became bigger than I ever thought it could be.

I don’t think about any of this lightly. I was told my body couldn’t do this. And yet here I am, with a houseful of sons who arrived by every path except the one anyone expected, by birth, by guardianship, by friendship that turned into family, by people choosing to show up.

I know what it feels like when all four of them are in a room together. The teasing, the inside jokes, the way the whole house shifts when they’re home. I’ve felt it, and I know not everyone gets to.

Tomorrow I’ll think about Bean, the child I never got to know. And this week I’ll watch four young men I do know, completely and fully, gather under my roof to celebrate one of their own. Both things are true. Both things live in me at the same time.

I am beyond blessed. I don’t take a single bit of it for granted.

Honor what was lost.

Carry what arrived.

Hold both without needing to choose.

Keep turning the page.

— Jennifer Timmerberg