Quietly Waiting

There is a particular kind of quiet that lives in the days before a birthday, especially in winter, when everything feels paused and hushed, as if the world itself is holding its breath. The house knows something is coming. I know it too. Even the light feels different, softer, lower, slower, stretching thin across the floors in the afternoons, lingering just a moment longer before disappearing altogether.

I find myself waiting in small, almost imperceptible ways. Waiting for balloons to arrive, waiting for the right moment to hang a banner, waiting for the day to tip from almost into now. Waiting for my heart to catch up with the fact that time is moving whether I am ready or not. Winter has a way of making that very clear, how quickly things pass, how quietly.

The house sits in a strange kind of stillness. Not empty, not busy, but suspended. Toys rest where they’ve been left, half-played with. Wrapping paper hides away in closets. A cake has not yet been baked, candles not yet counted. And yet, it is all already here, just beneath the surface. The anticipation hums softly, like a low note held in the background of everything we do.

I watch Clover move through these days with wide eyes and restless energy, sensing that something special is coming even if he cannot yet name it. He counts with his fingers, asks how many sleeps remain, pulls time forward with the pure impatience of childhood. I envy that part of him, the way he leans into what’s ahead without grief for what’s behind.

Murphy, on the other hand, moves through this waiting differently. He follows his brother’s lead with quiet devotion, watching more than asking, absorbing more than anticipating. He studies Clover carefully, mimicking his movements, his sounds, learning how to exist inside this uncertainty by standing close to someone he trusts. His skills arrive slowly, steadily, a new word, a sure step, a small hand reaching for mine, as if he understands instinctively that there is no rush, that becoming happens whether we push for it or not.

For me, the waiting feels heavier. Each birthday carries both a celebration and a quiet farewell. Another year tucked gently behind us. Another version of my child I have to release. Winter sharpens this tenderness, the way cold air does, beautiful, bracing, a little painful. I hold Clover longer in these days. I linger in the doorways. I memorize the sound of his voice as it is now, knowing it will not always be this way. And I glance back often, at Murphy, still so new to the world, already learning how time moves by watching his brother step ahead of him.

Outside, the trees are bare and honest. The mornings are slow and pale. The nights come early, wrapping everything in darkness before we’re quite finished with the day. It feels appropriate somehow, this season of pause, of reflection, of standing on the threshold between what was and what is about to arrive.

This space before a birthday is its own quiet ceremony. No candles yet. No singing. Just winter holding us gently in place. Just two small boys becoming, in different ways, at different speeds. And me, learning to stay here, in the almost, in the waiting, in the tender ache of loving someone so completely while time keeps moving forward anyway.