I lived in New York for five years.

Half a decade. It’s a long time–both long enough, and not nearly enough, but that’s how hearts work: splitting the difference, stretching across miles, scattering around places. When I first arrived in the city, summer of 2005, I spent those days before work began just walking around, circling the perimeter and moving my way inward, exploring side streets and main avenues, finding my favorite spots and avoiding the ones that I didn’t feel were for me. I became a part of New York, and it became a part of me, over those five years, but the early days are what I remember most: the unfamiliarity becoming familiar, the unknown becoming known, the uncertain becoming…home.

One of my proudest moments happened on an afternoon when I left work and emerged onto 51st Street. A group of construction workers stood atop a dump truck in front of our building, and as I headed toward 2nd Avenue, I heard the unmistakable sound of “locker room talk” from their perch. Their native language was once my second one, back in high school before I lost it, and in a fit of rage I spun around and yelled, “YO HABLO ESPANOL, ASSHOLES!” Their shocked expressions gave way to mirth and, I think, a kind of grudging respect, and I turned the corner feeling like I had finally made it here. Now, off to everywhere.

I thought I was bold then. I had no idea what was coming next.

You entered the scene on a stick, in plans and prayers, and then a spot of blood that became a phone call that became a ride to the hospital, and from that day everything changed. These past five years have been short, their days long, so much and yet never enough, and it’s hard to remember there was ever a time without you.

I almost can’t breathe when I think of how much I love you. Your little brother. Our family. You are me, my insides and my life, my breath and my hope. My insanity and my recovery, a part of every prayer and word. I am utterly ruined, and finally remade.

But first: a brief history.

I circled around you those early days too, like I did the city, but in more confined spaces and darker times, early-morning wake-ups and late-night cries. You wrecked me. I needed it. But I fought it anyway. I didn’t know how to be me, and your mom. I’m still working on that, but now I know they’re somehow the same, pieces fitting together slowly but more surely each day, as we still circle each other, drifting slowly in from the perimeter to end at early-morning moments with you next to me in bed, saying the word it took four years to hear as though you love the sound of it as much as I do: “Mommy.” I catch you looking at me, studying me like I do you, and we both grin, your smile a mixture of mine and your dad’s, your understanding beyond description. We have gone through so much to get here: nights on the high-risk ward, willing you to stay put. Nights in the neuro ward, willing you to drink so we could go home. Willing you to heal so I could breathe again. Days in therapy, willing you to speak. Willing this to get easier.

It has. But beautiful? It’s been that the whole time. You’ve been that the whole time.

I thought I was brave on 51st Street; you’ve been brave on operating tables and in scanning machines, through evaluations and in waiting rooms. The old me would have never called a child my hero. How many parents can say that–that their hero is their son? All these gifts you’ve given, and each of them so unexpected. I never would have chosen them, but grace would have nothing else: how like it to show up as a child.

Oh, and that? That first Christmas season, when we had barely gotten the lights strung and the stockings hung before you made your entrance, and I waited before for you, then waited after for Him, and for help. Advent would never be the same, this season of waiting, of expectation, of knowing how much more I needed than just myself. This year, though–this year was something else.

Your first year with words, and on December 1 it was like you knew it had begun. We were the only two downstairs, and you grabbed my hand. “Mommy, mommy, come to the red room and look at the Christmas tree!” And in the early-morning darkness, we turned on the lights together, and your face lit up in response. You patted the chair next to you and we sat there, gazing at the tree–we always find our stories, our rescue, at trees!–and in your face I saw my own, as a child and, in pieces, now, the hope and joy that can’t be too unlike that of the angels, they gazing now at what we wait for to happen and yet know by faith in every moment.

For this is what you do, what you’ve always done: you reset me. You force me, in your gentle and hard ways, to slow down. To breathe differently, as an act not just of survival, but of faith. You make me sit, and see. You have made it five years of Advent every day, waiting and watching all that you become. You, your brother, your dad, and grace itself through each of you and in its myriad ways, transforming my days and my growth into an unwinding instead of unraveling, unfurling rather than coming undone though they can often feel one and the same. I am assured, by Advent, by your story, by faith, that they are not.

And one more thing: all those months and years we longed for a brother for you, the loss before the yes, and the time I thought was too long, the separation in ages I wanted to diminish, it is perfect, of course. His words at first surpassing yours, and you now teaching him not just speech, but so much else. I watch each of you, so alike and so different, and feel my heart–as hearts often do–stretch between two tentpoles, land in different places, unfurl across the hemispheres of this world, of each of you, and of a grace that stretches five years, ten thousand miles, and forever.