Eli's First Birthday Invitation
It's been an emotional day for me, and it's only 10:00 a.m. We were getting Elijah ready to meet the bus to school, which means grabbing his bottles of formula from the fridge and zipping them up in his backpack. Nurse Melody was at her own home last night, so this was the first time anyone looked in the backpack since yesterday. The first thing I noticed was an envelope on top of the backpack contents. "What is this?" I said, although I suspected right away, and my existence shifted a bit, everything everywhere all at once, the way the world is lit differently during a solar eclipse when the moon bends all the light, and it's orange and lovely and glowing but still essentially the same light. Melissa was standing beside me as I opened the envelope and saw a card with Optimus Prime from the Transformers, and the words "You're Invited" underneath. My hand trembled, and I looked at Melissa. Tears jumped to my eyes, then more, and suddenly I was sobbi...