Happy Birthday, Carly!

He will kill me for calling me that here. Okay, maybe he'll just not talk to me for days. (I'm not worried, he refuses to make a Facebook account anyway!) But there used to be a time when he signed his name  on birthday cards for me as that, Carly. Now that he is 15, he cringes every time I call him that. But what the heck, he will always be a Carly in my heart.

He is still the most prayerful
from my bunch.

He has turned into a man too fast, I think. I know it is his way of coping with the dorm life and being separated from the comforts of our home since he was 13. Now he is called Luis by his friends. He doesn't want to be pampered now. He doesn't want too much attention from us. He doesn't ask or demand petty things from us. I just hope that he doesn't grow too independent from us too soon. At his age of 15, the mother in me still doesn't want to let go of the baby in him.


For he had been my baby the longest, among my three kids. I remember he couldn't sleep until I lay down beside him, massaged his back, and slept with him face-to-face. In response, he also used to massage my back until his drowsy eyes couldn't hold it any longer. I asked him one day, maybe when he was 8 or 9, if he would let me sleep beside him until he became a teenager, and he lovingly said, of course, Mom. 


Aah, such fleeting memories for him, but lasting ones for an old mother like me.


Happy birthday, Luis Carlo. Please let me call you Carly forever?