Liam is 26!!

 

Liam is 26! I know. I can't believe it either. And this is, I think, the first morning he's woken up since I started blogging in 2005, without a birthday post all ready for him. But I don't think he minds. This was taken at his breakfast birthday party in Columbus and I don't think that's Hi-C in his glass!

Yeah, your mama was found slumped over a book at 8 pm last night, and that's all she wrote yesterday: Nuthin.' So better late than never. It's still your birthday, and you and Ayla are on your way down here soon, which feels like a birthday present to me! I've got a nice meal prepped, which involves the last of the garden produce: a poblano pepper plant almost as tall as me, that showered me with goodness in November. 

I'm so proud of my artsy son. You work magic with your hand and eye. Please keep doing this, and I will too. It'll be a pact. Nobody draws Mac Miller like you do!

I'm so happy you've found someone as wildly artistic as you are. Who understands your creative soul and shares the gift. Ayla can draw and paint and make 3-D things like nobody's business! One would be hard-pressed to find a more talented couple. Or a cuter one!

You both love the beautiful things in life. One of my favorite memories from Phoebe and Óscar's wedding preparations was the day we all sat down and arranged flowers for the Faraway Friends Party tables. 

It felt as natural as breathing to be arranging flowers as a family, because aesthetics is what we do around here. 

Many thanks to Missy Fleeman for the FABULOUS flowers from her emerging flower farm right up the road! We used them well! That's Syrie, our wedding planner, to the left. 

A candid photo from the First Look in the wildflower meadow...

Loving on Curtis, who was all dolled up and loving the hoopla.

Nothing could have made my heart burst more than to see you stand in for your dad, bringing Phoebe down the aisle. You do him proud, lanky king. And you bear more than a passing resemblance to him.

Sometimes I step back and look at you two and say, wait a minute. These are my kids? The Siblings Dance was definitely one of those moments. Lightning in a bottle. 

And these are just the moments from July. You delight me and make me proud every day. And now you're 26, my beautiful boy. Keep on dancing, drawing, laughing, and making people happy. You are a gift.

        Wild, wonderful, sweet, gentle, hilarious, and just a wee bit weird: that's how I like my sons. 

                                                           Happy birthday, Liam! 

 Love, Ma

Liam is 25!

 My dear boy, 

  I never realized how having a birthday that falls on or around Election Day would factor into your life; all I remember was a rush of passion one February afternoon in 1999, and it gets blurry after that. Thus did biology deliver into my arms a nearly spherical baby boy who grew into a lanky wonder.

I miss you. But I always enjoy throwing together these birthday blogposts that celebrate you and the increasingly rare times we get to be together.  I'm so, so happy you're on your own path in Columbus, and that you've found a place where you're appreciated for the wonder you are, and can share a space with like-minded creatives and kind people. 

It's always such fun to see you in situ at Trader Joe's. Your coworker's heads all swivel, they smile knowingly as Mama Zick enters the store, tracking her boy.

You show me a beer made with (Trader Joe's oreo knockoff) JoJo's. Wut? And one called Mad Elf, a spicy Christmas brew that has 11% alcohol content, but "tastes like stinkbugs."

We start laughing and we don't stop.  I think one of my favorite things is to take you and Ayla out for a nice meal. 

All the better if Oscar and Phoebe are along, too! Addis Ethiopian Restaurant, North Columbus.

I love to go windowshopping with you, too. We mostly love to look at things we can't afford. 

Remember the 300 pound coffee table at Crate and Barrel?

This is how we know we're living in a gilded age. First, who could afford a 300 pound STONE coffee table? How much does it cost to ship? How many people does it take to carry it into your living room? Better decide where you want them to put it... FOREVER... because you're not gonna lift that thing EVER again. Much less dust under it. Or move it to wash the Ruggable. Sheesh. The impracticality of it all is overwhelming.

I love the little glimpses into your life that your too-sparse postings on Instagram afford me.  That's a really good whateverosaurus impersonation you're doing there, son! Look out! It's right BE-
HIIIND YOU!

LOOKIT THAT BOY!! That looks like a shirt your dad might have picked out, or worn. 

I'm just so thrilled you're having fun and exploring your new surroundings all the time. That you get to be around people your age (impossible back home; everyone has fled this town!) 

But no matter how far you roam, remember I am the little puff of ...wind...beneath your wings!

(they're set a bit low, I think).

I sure love seeing you in your new life with Ayla. What mother wouldn't be over the moon to see a photo like this one from June? Ah, you lucky kids. And you there, wearing my Dear Old Dad's pale blue eyes. He'd get such a kick out of you. He'd try to figure you out by interviewing you, then teasing you. Good luck, DOD.

You're getting Shaggier and Shaggier, and I love it! If you've got thick golden hair, rock it, son!!

I think I love this jazz club photo of you two best. I'm just happy that you live in a place that even HAS jazz clubs. I always knew, from the time you were a little boy and you got so excited when you smelled  

the "sweet French Fry air of town" 

that you'd find your place in a city. 

I can't wait to see you two for Thanksgiving. Your family awaits!

Happy birthday, darling Liam. I love you six hundred six sixty six!

Oh! and Someone has been waiting to say Happy Birfday to you!

                                                              It's Curtis. He's so patient. 

                                                                           OK go, Curtis. 

HADDY HADDY BIRFDAY WIAM!!

Wook! He miling!!

The Metamorphosis of Liam Thompson

 

Liam, I've been thinking about you. As you know, I love metamorphosis, watching living things grow and change and thrive. So I'll start your birthday post with the larval form. This photo was taken November 8, 1999, at around 2 in the afternoon, and we'd just gotten you home. It was your birth day. You were so precious. Your head was the size of a Delicious apple. Your hair was a bizarre satiny champagne color.

 

In this photo, you look to be about at the second instar.  Still pretty soft and grublike. Mighty cute.

 You've got some molts to go, little worm. Washington County Fair, probably September 2003.

We'll fast forward a bit to the sweet fella, who has shed into a form that's a bit more hip.

And I couldn't resist this one of you peeking to see if Daddy was really asleep in the hammock on Hog Island. If he was, he wouldn't be for long. You were an itch!

An all-time favorite, from that time I took you along to the Space Coast Birding Festival, and we had a little time just to mess around on the beach. Prolegs have lengthened. This caterpillar is maturing! 

I cannot look at this photo without laughing out loud. Lord, how you make me laugh. Still an itch!

Lots of good food, fresh air and exercise add up to a healthy late-instar unit. Running the haybales on a winter evening. I can only watch in amazement. This is not in my Hobbit repertoire, to leap at high speed from bale to bale. I'd be down in the first crevasse in a heartbeat.

Oh, my. I have been surpassed by a head or so.

Renting a tux for prom, April 6, 2017.

Ma wasn't going to let just anyone take your senior photos. She's too cheap, and 

homegrown is better.

Moving into elegant form as a college freshman on November 6, 2018. Who's that lady?

She keeps appearing. Must be someone important!

Four years later, at your June 2022 college grad party...

photo by Evan Dorsky

and a time-travel back in summer 2022...why, there's Hailey again! 

I feel like the lucky one to be able to see you through each molt.  You've emerged!

You're a Mothman now!

Liam and Hog Sphinx, July 24, 2022

Fully realized, and able to fly, now looking for a place to land.

I'm so thankful to have you here, if only for the interim**, to share this place, this cur, and these skies.

Your first magazine cover arrived via rumbly brown truck yesterday. I hadn't painted a magazine cover by the time I was 23! Oh, what a feeling, to see your work in print! May this be the first of many, many more!

And there's the full lunar eclipse from 3-6 AM, on your birthday. I am, of course, up to see it. I've gotten up to look at the moon at 12:30, 2, 3, 4... I peek out. The moon has but a tiny sliver of light; the disc is dark. You're asleep, and I'm not going to wake you.

I have been awake, enjoying the eclipse, sleeping in peaceful bits, thinking about the Metamorphosis of Liam. 23 years old!

I go to wake you. I have to. I have a coat for you in my arms. You think about it for a minute, then come with me through the dark house to the downstairs patio. Through the binoculars, the moon is a pellucid disc, not red, but more the color of sun through a squirrel's ear.

Orion blazes to the south, leaning into his battle with Taurus. Mars is hung up right between Taurus' horns.

I'm betting on Taurus for this battle; he's got Mars on his mind. The Pleiades twinkle over the moon, revealed in its darkness.

 Everything is perfectly dark but for the stars and that softly glowing disc. The night is cold, breezy. Dry leaves swish and tick in the wind. 

Whoa, coool! you say as you look through the binoculars. I'm grinning in the dark, glad you let me drag you out yet again into this abundant life.

You look again, take a deep breath of the sweet cold night, and turn back to the warm house and your  bed.

I'm glad I woke you after all. I stay out, looking. 

 A meteor streaks over. I'm still smiling about it when another meteor falls.

It has to be so dark to see the meteors any more.

The moon stays in totality for ages longer than I thought it would. Its disk gets darker and darker as it sinks behind the orchard trees. I can't see my hand in front of my face. I can't take photos; this is well above my pay grade as a photographer. It's 6:05 AM, and still dull squirrel-ear mauve. 6:18 am, and it's still a barely visible pinkish whisper in the west as dawn streak-paints the eastern sky. Who knew?

Up and down the tower stairs I go. I hope you're asleep again.

I love you, sweet, funny, brilliant, beautiful boy. I sure love living here with you. Happy birthday, and salut! 

to another swing around Ol' Sol.

 Here's to you, to the tremendous strides you've taken the last few years; to the life I know is waiting for you out there, the work that will, I trust, use your talents and bolster your confidence; a space of your own; love and travel and new places to explore on your big, still-tender wings.

**PSA: he's still looking for a position as a graphic designer. The closer to NYC, the better.  

Liam is 22!

Content Warning: There's a LOT of it. Thwarted by logistics and a fabulous impending trip he's taking to see his favorite musician (Joji!), I can't be with Liam today on his 22nd birthday. So I have overcompensated by spending far too many hours, OK, days, gathering together a compendium of his spring and summer at home, as a gift to him, to look back on and keep in his memory. What higher purpose for a blogpost? Here's your little present, my love. Keep having a wonderful day. Mwah!!

You came home in the early spring, 

 in time for Easter (yes, that's a dress made of Peeps!)

 and for irises

 and for moving the orchids outside

and you stayed for the summer. This is a good place to stay for the summer. 

Just ask Rio Samba, the rose that grew taller than you. She got pondmuck

you got grilled salmon with mango/peach/cilantro/lime salsa, garden beans and coconut rice

(among many other things)

Your little cur-dog was happy to have his favorite boy home. 

So was your mama.

We took off in May to see your sister in the most heavenly part of North Carolina

and we had such a blast in the mountains, even tubing down a river!

(but not this one). Jumping giant rocks in your skivvies! Man for scale!

As always, you made me laugh until I couldn't breathe. We will return to the 

faux Bavarian village of Helen, GA. We will eat bad wienerschnitzel, drink bier, watch carpenter bees drill holes in all the gingerbread, und larf.

Nothing could be more fun than traveling with you and Poobs, world's best trip planner, logistics queen, and guide supreme.

When we got back, you went into your pupal case

and metamorphosed into something with less hair

and somewhat spicier

You were here for blackberry time 

(Oh, how I love to hear the pewee and towhee sing, and the low music of crickets--isn't it rich?) Not to mention canine ASMR.

You experienced new flower planting time (Everything has a scent in Liam's World!)

Cuddle time

and datura time.

There were July thunderstorms

and crazy close sphinx moths at the evening primrose

and a bike ride to North Bend State Park

with cool scary tunnels that tested our mettle.

You are far braver than I am. You led me through to the other side, every time!

Along the bike trail we found an antique gasoline engine that conjured my Dear Old Dad so hard....

almost as much as your face in this picture. You've got your dad's body, and my father's ice-blue eyes.

You've definitely got your dad's sense of humor, too! and it carries us through. Can't you hear him laughing--that high hooty laugh where he spins around in circles and claps? This video we made would definitely evoke that laugh. 

But it wasn't allll play. Just mostly. We cut and pulled one hella lot of wisteria, taking most of a hill that was finally conquered only this past weekend. 

I miss you every second when I'm working outdoors. Tall, strong as a very slender ox and willing--we 

git 'r dun!

Here it is now, with the sun shining through wisteria-free sugar maples! Progress! It's beginning to look like somebody actually lives here! And cares! And mows!

We are a team. #volunteen

When we weren't slaying invasive vines, we dawdled down Dean's Fork

and played on our quiet country road

That's my sweet boy, apologizing to the cow he frightened. 

Why you do dat?

We talked with some of our favorite new neighbors, big

and very small

the quiet kind, that don't fire guns or roar around on ORV's.

Live, love, MoooV

There were a couple of birthdays--Phoebe turned 25!! and got a cake and presents

(while your birthday celebration is a bit more...diffuse)

Some sycamore peeling (It's a rivertown thing)

and a memorable full-moon bike ride through sleepy Marietta.

Didn't we have fun? I poached a lot of your shots. I love your eye.

Maybe my favorite thing we did together this summer was paint our first mural!!

You look a bit apprehensive, but you're going to crush this otter!

Me demonstrating tail shading tactics

photo by Michelle Waters

then I left you to paint your otter perfectly while I messed mine up totally

We pulled it off in only four days!

With such excellent company, smooth creamy mural paint and fabulous music, I would drop everything to paint a mural with you and this team again! Thanks, Bobby Rosenstock!! What an honor to work with you for Marietta Main Street's Public Art project!

They like it! They really like it!

photo by Michelle Waters

We watched the sunset that evening, the last artists out of the tunnel of course. What a feeling of accomplishment!

Sweet Liam, if there's a picture or a video that sums up the silly fun we have when we're together, this one may be it. My favorite part is when we double up on Curtis. I hope YouTube will let the music play (copyright restrictions!) If not, we'll look even sillier than we are, which would be quite an accomplishment. 

               

Happy birthday, Stupendous Man! Phoebs, Curtis and I love you to the stars and back.