Where Did You Come From?

I knew this day was coming, and it still sideswiped me.
My firstborn is a teenager today.
He's still shorter than me,
but I expect next year that won't be the case.
We are giving him piano lessons as his birthday gift.

I remember how his dad looked out at a baseball field
on our drive home from the hospital with him.
His dad loves baseball.
But this son is not the baseball type.
His mind is not his dad's, and it isn't mine.
His dad made the phone call to arrange the lessons,
because he loves who this particular man/child is.

He picks up instruments and works things out on them.
He draws with an eye that sees things three-dimensionally,
and can spin them in his mind.
He delights in geeky books about relativity and chemicals.
He sat in public crocheting an angel a few weeks ago.
I do not crochet, but this boy,
when he was shown how to make a simple crocheted chain
at the age of six or seven,
hid under his covers with a flashlight and crocheted a functional mitten.
The other day, we were discussing lie detectors, and he casually said,
"I made one from my snap circuits a few years ago."
From what he said, it worked in some form or another.

Sometimes I look at my children, and think,  
"Where did you come from?" 
Because they came from us, but they are not us.
They are eternal beings,
but they have not always existed.
God still speaks life into existence,
and sends it into the world through the doorway of other lives.
It stuns me to have been the doorway to these living beings.

Happy Birthday, son.