It’s 24 degrees in the Motor City. The sun is shining, a rare occasion during these dreary Michigan winters and I squint. Wore those glasses so I could see this morning in favor of the shades. Silly me, clarity of street signs matters little when the blinding glare makes it impossible to see the car in front of you. The wind is that kind of icy cold that makes you wish you could bundle up in full ski gear for work. That parkas and knee high boots were acceptable office wear, and turtlenecks and giant cable knit sweaters were the latest thing in appropriate corporate attire. The forecast is calling for something under a foot of snow in the next 36 hours and it makes us all giggle a little. Under a foot? Whoopie. It’s especially amusing in light of the recent snow dump on a region of east coasters who rarely, if ever, experience the kind of snow we look forward to here. We haven’t gotten it this year and the radio announcers are having fun at our seemingly traded winters. We are ready for it here, I feel for the communities who are unprepared to go weeks without seeing bare pavement. To be honest, I miss it a little. What can I say? I’m a Michigan girl.

And so today is like every other day and no other day but they all run together. I woke up alone and had a chat with the angel who has my son’s name while I fed the pets and readied my face for the world. I told him to keep an eye on his daddy and I really miss kissing his face. Our relationship is changing and I feel it. It’s the strangest thing having a dynamic relationship with a person who isn’t on this earth, but it’s true. Because I am changing, I am seeing him differently all the time, and my view of who I am, as a woman and as his mother is forever being altered. I am realizing that not only do I have to survive this life until I see him again but I should probably do something with it, be someone, make something good.

Today I will show up at work, and get some things done. I will lunch with a treasured friend; I will jot down some notes on this fleeting feeling. And the good I will place in this world in the name of my son is in the sustainment of this business, a moment of laughter with a woman I am proud to watch grow into herself, and in the brief pause one person will take after reading these words and go kiss her baby. She forgot that today could have been a day without the little one who cried her awake.

It’s not all I have to give, but it is what I have to give today, kiddo. And so I am giving it for you.